THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


MOVEMENTS 

OF 

RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT   IN   BRITAIN 

DURING  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 
ST.   GILES'  LECTURES 


JOHN  TULLOCH,  D.D.,  LED. 

■SENIOR   PRINCIPAL   IN    THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   ST.    ANDREWS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1893 


•i 


TO 

Mrs.   OLIPHANT, 

AUTHOR   OF   '  THE   CHRONICLES   OF   CARLINGFORD,'    '  A   BELEAGUERED 

CITY,'    'life  of    EDWARD   IRVING,'    'THE    LITERARY    HISTORY   OF 

ENGLAND,  I79O-1825,'  ETC. 


My  dear  Mrs.  Oliphant, 

It  Is  a  great  pleasure  to  me  to 
be  allowed  to  associate  your  name  with  these 
Lectures.  Slight  as  they  are,  I  have  been 
reminded  more  than  once,  during  their  pre- 
paration, of  a  large  subject  which  used  to 
engage  our  discussion  many  years  ago,  and 
in  the  treatment  of  which  you  were  to  bear 
what  would  have  proved  by  far  the  most 
interesting  part.  This,  like  many  other  pro- 
jects, is  not  now  likely  to  be  attempted  ;  but 
the  thought  of  it  has  brought  you  and  our 
long  friendship  much  to  my  mind. 


iv  Dedication. 

If  I  were  to  express  all  the  admiration  I  feel 
for  your  genius,  and  still  more  all  the  esteem 
I  have  learned  to  cherish  for  your  character, 
I  should  use  language  which  I  know  you  would 
refuse  to  read  ;  but  I  may  at  least  be  allowed 
to  say  thus  publicly,  that  I  know  of  no  writer 
to  whose  large  powers,  spiritual  insight,  and 
purity  of  thought,  and  subtle  discrimination 
of  many  of  the  best  aspects  of  our  social  life 
and  character,  our  generation  owes  so  much 
as  it  does  to  you. 

Always  faithfully  yours, 

JOHN  TULLOCH. 

University,  St.  Andrews, 
August  1885. 


CONTENTS. 

LECTURE    I. 
COLERIDGE  AND  HIS  SCHOOL. 

PAOB 

Scope  of  the  present  course,  .......  1—4 

The  beginnings  of  the  century — Wordsworth,          ...  4 

Coleridge  early  abandoned  poetry,          .....  6 

Extent  of  his  influence  on  religious  thought,  ....  7 

Defects  in  his  character :  Lamb :  Carlyle,      ....  8 

State  of  religion  at  beginning  of  the  centuiy,  ....  9 

Coleridge  exercised  a  definite  influence  on  Religious  Thought  by — 

( I.)  A  renovation  of  current  Christian  ideas,   .         .         ,  11-24 

His  spiritual  philosophy,           .....  11 

Severance  of  religion  from  the  highest  spiritual  life  in 

man  by  the  Evangelical  School,   .         .         .         .  13 

Coleridge  maintained  their  essential  kinship,    .         .  14 
Instance  his  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  Sin  and 

Redemption,        .......  20 

He  recognised  a  province  of  the  Unknown,      .         .    '         23 

(2.)  An  advance  in  Biblical  study,           ....  24-30 

Confessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit,          ...  24 

Futility  of  the  theory  of  literal  Inspiration,        .         .  27 

Alleged  difficulty  of  the  selective  process,          .         .  28 

Its  necessity,  . 29 


vi  Contents. 

PAGE 

(3.)  By  an  enlarged  conception  of  the  church,         .         .  30-33 

Essay  on  The  Constitution  of  Church  and  State,        .  31 

National  Church  and  Christian  Church,  ...  32 

His  Disciples — Julius  Charles  Hare:  John  Sterling,  34-38 

LECTURE    II. 
THE  EARLY  ORIEL  SCHOOL  AND  ITS  CONGENERS. 

Whately  and  the  Early  Oriel  Movement,         ....  41 

The  *  Noetics ' — Dr.  Hawkins :  Copleston :  Arnold,       .         .  42 

Blanco  "White, 45 

Whately — ^his  youth.     Limited  tastes  in  literature, ...  46 

Comparison  with  Coleridge,    ......  48 

His  critical  work  On  Some  of  the  Difficulties  in  the  Writings 

of  the  Apostle  Paul, 49 

Logic  and  Fcriptural  truth,      ......  5* 

His  character  and  influence 5^ 

Arnold — His  friendship  with  Whately, 53 

•  Is  Arnold  a  Christian  ?  ' 54 

His  insistance  on  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  every- 
day life, 56 

His  idea  of  the  Church,  .         ......  58 

Work  in  Biblical  criticism, 6i 

Hampden — Motives  for  his  persecution,         ....  65 
The  Bampton  Lectures  of  1832,  on  The  Scholastic  Phi- 
losophy in  relation  to  Christian  Theology,     ,         .         .  67 

The  outcry  of  1836, 71 

Value  of  his  critical  work,      ......  74 

Thirlwall — His  early  studies — translation  of   Schleiermacher 

— character  and  influence,       ......  75-79 

Milman, 79-85 

\W%  History  of  the  feivs,          .         .         .          .         .         .  8 1 


Contents, 


vu 


LECTURE    III, 


THE  OXFORD  OR  ANGLO-CATHOLIC  MOVEMENT. 


Its  beginnings,       .         . 

Newman  and  Pusey — their  early  views, 

Pusey's  German  studies,  and  original  Liberalism,  . 

Newman's  religious  and  personal  influence, 

R.  H.  Froude — his  influence  on  Newman, 

His  character, 
Keble — his  ascendancy  at  Oxford, 

Character,      .... 

The  Christian  Year, 

Points  of  Contact  with  Newman, 
Course  of  the  movement — political  events, 

Keble's    Assize    Sermon — followed    by 
Times,        .... 

Newman  as  a  tract-writer. 

Leadership  of  Dr.  Pusey, 

Dogmatic  principles  at  root,    . 

Newman's  ascendancy — Sermons, 

Progress  towards  Rome, 

Tract  90 — consequences. 

Rise  of  the  Younger  Anglican  School, 

Newman's   Anglo-Catholicism   essentially   external 

transitional, 

Significance  and  effects  of  the  Oxford  movement, 


Tracts  for   the, 


and 


89 
92 

95 
96 

99 
100 
102 
103 
104 

106 
107 
109 
III 
114 

"5 
117 
120 

121 
122 


VIll 


Contents. 


LECTURE   IV. 

MOVEMENT   OF   RELIGIOUS   THOUGHT   IN 
SCOTLAND. 

PAGE 

Intellectual  energies  of  Scotland  manifested  in  religious  move- 
ments,     '25 

Naturalistic  tendencies — George  Combe,         .         .         .         .  127 

Heresies  abounding, 128 

Thomas  Erskine — his  character  and  friendships,     .         .         .  129 
His  first  book — emphasising   the   subjective    aspects   of 

religion,      .........  ^Z7> 

Further  applications — criticism  of  his  views,   .         .         .  140 

John  Macleod  Campbell — his  ministry  and  doctrines,      .         .  145 

Prosecution — his  defence, 15° 

Edward  Irving, 156-160 

The  anonymous  True  Plan  of  a  Living  Temple  and  other  works,  1 63 

Deposition  of  their  author,  Mr.  Wright  of  Borthwick,      .  165 

Character  and  gains  of  this  epoch, 167 


LECTURE   V. 


THOMAS   CARLYLE   AS   A   RELIGIOUS   TEACHER. 

Introductory — Religious  thought  outside  the  Church,      .         .  169 

Thomas  Carlyle — Parentage  and  inherited  characteristics,       .  172 

Early  religious  experience, 175 

His 'Conversion' (1821) iSo 

Life  at  Ploddam  Hill  (1826), 182 

Marriage — Literary  stniggles, 185 

Sartor  Resartus — Remarks  on  his  style,         .         .         .  185 

Rectorial  address  (1865)  and  sulisequent  popularity,        .  187 


Contents. 


IX 


His  characteristics  and  influence — 

(l.)  As  literary  man, 

His  views  on  literature,  . 
Discovered  a  new  literary  tone  and 
German  literature — results, 

(2.)  As  religious  teacher, 
Effect  on  individuals, 
Views  on  historic  religions, 
Explanation  of  his  attitude  towards 
Insistance  on  a  Divine  order,  . 
Worship  of  Supreme  force. 
Summary,     ...... 


LECTURE  VI. 

JOHN  STUART  MILL  AND   HIS  SCHOOL. 

The  upbringing  of  John  Stuart  Mill  and  that  of  Carlyle — a 

comparison  and  contrast,         ......  209 

James  Mill's  unbelief, 211 

John  Stuart  Mill — his  early  education, 217 

Subsequent  logical  training, 218 

The  crisis  of  his  life — his  '  Conversion,'  ....  222 

Modification  in  his  opinions — Works,      ....  225 
Criticism  of  the  ground-assumption  of  his  philosophy  as 

affecting  morals  and  religion,       .....  230 

His  special  views  on  religion, 237 

His  contribution  to  religious  thought,       ....  243 

George  Grote — his  want  of  spiritual  experience,     .         .         .  247 

More  a  Millite  than  John  Stuart  Mill  himself,  .         .  250 

G.  H.  Lewes — his  philosophy,       .         .         .         .         .         .  251 

Character  as  a  thinker, 252 


Contents. 


LECTURE  VII. 


'BROAD   CHURCH' 


F.  D.  MAURICE   AND   CHARLES 
KINGSLEY. 


Sceptical  reaction  from  the  Oxford  movement, 
Francis  Newman  :  Clough :  Matthew  Arnold's  poems, 
George  Eliot  and  her  circle,  .... 

Extent  of  her  hold  on  religion, 
Counter-influence — The  '  Broad  '  Church, 
The  Maurice  household — religious  divergence 
F.  D.  Maurice — his  religious  experience, 

Fundamental  Principles  of  his  religious  c7-eed — 
(i.)  Principle  of  '  Universal  Redemption,' 
(2.)  The  desire  for  unity. 
His  creed  positive  and  dogmatic, 
The     Maurice-Kingsley     School,     like     the 

Platonists,  reconstructive  and  apologetic. 
Attitude  assumed  in  his  Theological  Essays, 
His  significance  and  work  as  a  religious  thinker, 
His  life — connection  with  the  Oxford  movement, 
Charles  Kingsley — ^his  relations  with  Maurice, 
Intensely  religious  character  of  Maurice, 
Kingsley  as  a  religious  teacher,      .... 


Cambridge 


PAGI 

2'54 
256 
256 

259 
260 
263 
266 

268 
271 
276 

277 
280 
282 
284 
286 
291 
293 


LECTURE  VIII. 


•BROAD   CHURCH'   Continued:    F.  W.   ROBERTSON  AND 
BISHOP  EWING. 


Robertson — early  life  and  opinions. 

Ministry  at  Winchester — asceticism, 

Geneva, 

Cheltenham — change  of  views. 


295 
297 
299 
300 


Co7itents. 


XI 


His  spiritual  struggles — the  Tyrol,  . 
Brighton — power  as  a  preacher, 
Characteristics  as  a  preacher — 

(i.)  Expansive  intellectual  faculty,  . 
(2.)  Spiritual  intensity,    . 
(3.)  Sincerity  and  love  of  truth, 
His  theological  standpoint, 
His  attitude  towards  dogma,  . 
Bishop  Ewing — his  religious  characteristics,  . 
Religious  Thought  since  i860. 
Its  scientific  character,  .         .         .         •         . 
Fundamental  Questions,         .... 
New  spiritual  movement — Dr.  James  Martineau, 
Dean  Stanley  and  Mr.  Jowett, 
Concluding  remarks, 


PAGE 

303 
306 

309 

3" 

315 

316 

320-326 

327-334 
328 
328 
329 

334 


MOVEMENTS 

OF 

RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT. 

1820-60. 


ST.  GILES'  LECTURES. 
I. 

COLERIDGE  AND    HIS   SCHOOL. 

T  HAVE  undertaken  to  give  in  a  course  of  eight 
lectures  some  account  of  the  Movements  of 
ReHgious  Thought  in  our  country  during  the  present 
century.  As  the  subject  is  in  any  view  a  large  one, 
and  presents  many  aspects,  it  is  important  at  the 
outset  to  indicate  its  exact  character  and  the  Hmits 
within  which  I  propose  to  treat  it. 

Our  subject  then  is  the  Movements  of  ReHgious 
Thought — not  of  ReHgion — within  the  century.  Re- 
ligion is  a  wide  word,  with  some  meanings  of  which 
we  have  nothing  to  do.  The  expression  '  Religious 
Thought '  may  be  also  more  or  less  widely  interpreted ; 
but  on  any  interpretation  it  leaves  outside  much  be- 
longing to  religion  and  its  life  and  movement  in  the 
world.  It  leaves  outside,  for  example,  not  only  the  large 
field  of  practical  Christian  action,  but  also  that  of  ec- 
clesiastical  and   politico-ecclesiastical   parties.     With 

A 


2  Movements  of  Religious  Tlioiight. 

these,  properly  speaking,  we  have  nothing  to  do.  It 
is  only  when  their  motif  or  spirit,  as  in  the  Oxford 
movement,  is  inextricably  intertwined  with  impulses 
of  new  or  revived  thought,  that  we  touch  upon  them. 

A  movement  of  religious  thought  implies  the  rise 
of  some  fresh  life  within  the  sphere  of  such  thought — 
some  new  wave  of  opinion  either  within  the  Church, 
or  deeply  affecting  it  from  without,  modifying  its  past 
conceptions.  It  is  a  moulding  influence,  leaving 
behind  it  definite  traces,  and  working  its  way  more  or 
less  into  the  national  consciousness,  so  that  this  con- 
sciousness remains  affected  even  if  the  movement 
itself  disappears.  It  is  this  character  which  gives  signi- 
ficance to  our  subject,  and  will  be  found  to  lend  to  it 
interest  for  all  who  are  really  concerned  with  religious 
questions  and  the  progress  of  higher  civilisation. 

Thus  definite  in  subject,  our  lectures  are  limited 
locally.  The  movements  of  which  I  am  to  speak 
are  movements  within  our  country  alone.  The  large 
field  of  Continental  criticism  and  speculation  in 
matters  of  religion  is  not  before  us,  although  it  may 
be  impossible  at  times  to  refrain  from  stretching  our 
view  towards  it. 

Further,  our  lectures  run  within  definite  chrono- 
logical limits  ;  and  this  claims  particular  notice.  They 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  last  twenty-five  years, 
or  immediately  preceding  generation.  They  only 
reach  to  i860  at  the  utmost,  about  which  time  a 
marked  change  took  place  in  the  current  of  philo- 
sophical and  religious  speculation,  a  change  which 
may  generally,  and  for  our  present  purpose,  be 
indicated  by  the  word  now  so  common — Evolution, 
New  schools  of  thought  have  arisen  in  all  directions, 


Coleridge  mid  /lis  School.  3 

in  philosophy,  ethics,  and  theology,  more  or  less 
affected  by  the  idea  which  this  word  denotes.  But 
all  these  schools  in  the  meantime  are  beyond  our 
scope.  It  was  undesirable  to  attempt  to  embrace 
a  more  extended  field  within  one  course  of  lectures ; 
and  my  only  fear  is  that  the  course  will  be  found  not 
too  limited,  but  too  diversified  and  ample.  From 
Coleridge  to  John  Stuart  Mill,  from  Newman  to 
Maurice,  from  Carlyle  to  Kingsley  and  Frederick 
Robertson,  carries  us  so  wide  afield  that  we  shall 
have  to  complain  not  of  lack  of  material,  but  of  an 
embarrassment  of  rich  material. 

The  interest  and  importance  of  the  subject  can 
hardly  be  doubted  by  any  who  understand  it.  The 
movements  of  religious  thought  in  our  own  country 
lie  at  least  very  close  to  us  and  the  life  and  work  of 
all  our  churches.  We  cannot  escape  the  influence 
of  those  movements  whatever  be  our  own  position. 
Even  those  who  most  disown  all  connection  with 
modern  Thought  are  sometimes  found  strongly  re- 
flecting its  influences, — more  frequently  perhaps  mis- 
taking its  real  meaning.  It  seems  to  be  the  duty 
therefore  of  all  intelligent  persons  to  try  in  some 
degree  to  understand  the  impulses  moving  their  time. 
Such  and  such  opinions,  it  is  often  said,  are  '  in  the 
air.'  The  thought  of  our  own  time,  in  its  evolving 
phases  or  folds  of  varied  hue,  bathes  us  like  an  atmo- 
sphere. It  wraps  us  round,  penetrating  often  to  our 
inmost  sentiments.  A  certain  class  of  minds  remain 
indifferent, — secure  within  their  well-worn  armour 
of  traditionary  prejudgment.  Another  class  is  apt 
to  be  carried  away  altogether,  and  lose  their  old 
moorings.    But  religious  thought  is  happily  not  at  the 


4  Movements  of  Religious  Tlumght. 

mercy  of  either  of  these  classes.  Rightly  viewed,  it  is 
typified  neither  by  tradition  nor  revolution.  It  is  a 
continuous  power  in  human  life  and  history,  moving 
onwards  with  the  ever  accumulating  growths  of  human 
knowledge  and  of  spiritual  experience ;  ever  new  yet 
old ;  linking  age  to  age,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  in  happier 
and  more  benign  inteUigence. 

Let  me  further  say  that  I  do  not  mean  to  charac- 
terise what  may  be  right  or  wrong  in  these  movements. 
I  only  venture  to  describe  them,  and  set  them  fairly 
before  you  as  I  myself  understand  them.  Particularly 
my  aim  will  be  to  show  in  a  purely  historical  spirit 
how  naturally  they  connect  themselves  with  one 
another,  and  so  far  explain  each  other  and  them- 
selves in  the  circumstances  of  their  rise  and  course. 
I  do  not  myself  believe  in  movements  of  thought 
brought  about  by  man's  device,  nor  in  the  appli- 
cation of  such  commonplaces  as  '  orthodox '  and 
'  heterodox '  to  the  description  of  such  movements. 
I  believe  in  the  continuous  movement  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  enlarging,  correcting,  and  modifying  human 
opinion. 

We  speak  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries 
as  marking  distinct  phases  of  thought ;  but  we  have 
to  remember  that  such  classifications  are  conven- 
tional and  so  far  inapplicable.  The  intellectual  revival 
particularly  identified  with  our  century  had  begun 
before  the  close  of  the  last  century,  and  it  was  not 
till  twenty  years  after  our  era  commenced  that  any 
new  movement  can  be  traced  in  the  sphere  of 
religious  thought.  The  flush  of  new  insight  and 
passion,  arising  from  the  larger  and  closer  study  of 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  5 

Nature  and  Humanity  born  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, poured  itself  forth  in  poetry  long  before  the 
larger  and  intenser  spirit  of  the  time  showed  itself 
in  other  directions.  It  may  be  said  that  Words- 
worth gave  voice  to  a  higher  thought  not  only  about 
nature  but  about  religion.  The  '  Solitary  among  the 
Mountains  '  is  a  preacher  and  not  only  a  singer.  He 
goes  to  the  heart  of  religion  and  lays  anew  its  founda- 
tion in  the  natural  instincts  of  man.  But  while  the 
poetry  both  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  was  instinct 
with  a  new  life  of  religious  feeling,  and  may  be  said 
to  have  given  a  new  radiancy  to  its  central  principles,^ 
it  did  not  initiate  any  distinctive  movement.  In 
religious  opinions  Wordsworth  soon  fell  back  upon, 
if  he  ever  consciously  departed  from,  the  old  lines  of 
Anglican  tradition.  The  vague  pantheism  of  the 
'Excursion'  implies  rather  a  lack  of  distinctive  dogma 
than  any  fresh  insight  into  religious  problems  or 
capacity  of  co-ordinating  them  in  a  new  manner. 
And  so  soon  as  the  need  of  definite  religious  con- 
ceptions came  to  the  poet,  the  Church  in  her  custom- 
ary theology  became  his  satisfactory  refuge.  The 
'  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets  '  mark  this  definite  stage  in 
his  spiritual  development.  Wordsworth  did  for  the 
religious  thought  of  his  time  something  more  and 
better  perhaps  than  giving  it  any  definite  impulse. 
While  leaving  it  in  the  old  channels  he  gave  it  a 
richer  and  deeper  volume.  He  showed  with  what  vital 
affinity  religion  cleaves  to  humanity  in  all  its  true 
and  simple  phases  when  uncontaminated  by  conceit 
or  frivolity.  Nature  and  man  alike  were  to  him 
essentially  religious,  or  only  conceivable  as  the  out- 
1  '  Admiration,  Hope,  and  Love.'     See  The  Excursion,  B.  iv. 


6  Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

come  of  a  Spirit  of  Life,  '  the  Soul  of  all  the  worlds.' ' 
Wordsworth  in  short  remained,  as  he  began,  a  poet. 
He  did  not  enter  into  the  sphere  of  religious  thought 
or  busy  himself  with  its  issues. 

Coleridge's  career  presents  a  marked  contrast  to 
that  of  his  friend.  He  may  be  said  to  have  aban- 
doned poetry  just  when  Wordsworth  in  his  quiet  settle- 
ment at  Grasmere(i799)  was  consecrating  his  life  to  it. 
Fellows  in  quickening  the  poetic  revival  of  their  time, 
they  were  soon  widely  separated  in  life  and  pursuit. 
Whether  it  be  true,  according  to  De  Quincey,  that 
Coleridge's  poetical  power  was  killed  by  the  habit  of 
opium-eating,  it  is  certainly  true  that  'the  harp  of 
Quantock '  ^  was  never  again  struck  save  for  a  brief 
moment.  The  poet  Coleridge  passed  into  the  lec- 
turer, and  political  and  literary  critic,  and  then, 
during  the  final  period  of  his  Hfe,  from  1816  to  1834, 
into  the  philosopher  and  theologian.  It  is  this  latter 
period  of  his  life  that  alone  concerns  us. 

I  need  not  say  how  differently  Coleridge  has  been 
estimated  as  a  religious  thinker.  Carlyle's  caricature 
of  the  Sage  as  he  sat  '  on  the  brow  of  Highgate 
Hill '  in  those  years,^  is  known  to  all ;  and  a  severely 

1  The  Excursion,  B.  ix. 

2  Not  only  the  Ancient  Mariner  and  the  first  part  of  Christabel,  but 
also  Kubla  Khan  were  composed  at  Nether  Stowey  among  the  Quantock 
Hills  in  1797.  The  second  part  of  Christabel  belongs  to  the  y^ar 
iSoo,  and  was  written  at  Keswick,  although  not  published  till  l8l6. 
Nothing  of  the  same  quality  was  ever  produced  by  Coleridge,  although 
he  continued  to  write  verses. 

*  The  value  of  Carlyle's  description  may  now  be  judged  more  fairly 
in  the  light  of  his  own  Life  and  Letters,  and  the  indiscriminate  and 
savage  assaults  which  he  has  made  on  so  many  reputations.  '  It  may  be 
found,'  said  a  reviewer  of  the  Life  of  John  Sterling'm  iht  North  British 
Review,  Feb.  1 85  2,  with  a  prescient  insight  too  unhappily  realised  by 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  7 

critical,  but,  as  we  must  judge,  superficial  estimate 
has  been  lately  given  by  Mr.  Traill  in  the  series 
of  '  English  Men  of  Letters.'  Our  business  is  not 
so  much  to  attempt  any  criticism  of  the  value  of 
Coleridge's  thought  as  to  describe  it  as  a  new  power. 
That  it  was  such  a  power  is  beyond  all  question. 
It  is  not  merely  the  testimony  of  such  men  as  Arch- 
deacon Hare  and  John  Sterling,  of  Newman  and 
of  John  Stuart  Mill,  but  it  is  the  fact  that  the 
later  streams  of  religious  thought  in  England  are 
all  more  or  less  coloured  by  his  influence.  They 
flow  in  deeper  and  different  channels  since  he  lived. 
Not  only  are  some  of  those  streams  directly  trace- 
able to  him,  and  said  to  derive  all  their  vitality 
from  his  principles,  but  those  which  are  most  opposed 
to  him  have  been  moulded  more  or  less  by  the  im- 
press of  his  religious  genius.  There  was  much  in 
the  man  Coleridge  himself  to  provoke  animadver- 
sion ;  there  may  have  been  aspects  of  his  teaching 
that  lend  themselves  to  ridicule  ;  but  if  a  genius, 
seminal  as  his  has  been  in  the  world  of  thought  and 
of  criticism  as  well  as  poetry,  is  not  to  excite  our 
reverence,  there  is  little  that  remains  for  us  to  rever- 
ence in  the  intellectual  world.  And  when  literature 
regains  the  higher  tone  of  our  earlier  national  life, 
the  tone  of  Hooker  and  of  Milton,  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge   will    be    again    acknowledged,    in   Julius 

Mr.  Froude's  biogiaphic  labours,  '  It  may  be  found  when  the  secrets  of 
another  Sanctuary  are  unveiled,  that  if  there  was  not  much  "  pious " 
or  "partly  courteous  snuffle"  in  the  discourse  there,  there  was  yet  in 
plenty  "  a  confused  unintelligible  flood  of  utterance  threatening  to 
swamp  all  known  land-marks  of  thought  and  drown  the  world  and  us  " 
— a  vast  vituperative  commotion  which  made  noise  in  the  ear  without 
bringing  much  light  or  life  to  the  heart.' 


8  Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Hare's  words,  as  'a  true  sovereign  of  English 
thought'  He  will  take  rank  in  the  same  line  of 
spiritual  genius.  He  has  the  same  elevation  of 
feeling,  the  same  profound  grasp  of  moral  and 
spiritual  ideas,  the  same  wide  range  of  vision.  He 
has  in  short  the  same  love  of  wisdom,  the  same 
insight,  the  same  largeness — never  despising  nature, 
or  art,  or  literature  for  the  sake  of  religion,  still  less 
ever  despising  religion  for  the  sake  of  culture.  In  read- 
ing over  Coleridge's  prose  works  again,  especially  his 
Aids  to  Reflection,  and  his  Confessions  of  an  Inquiring 
Spirit, — returning  to  them  after  a  long  past  familiatity, 
— I  am  particularly  struck  with  their  massive  and 
large  intellectuality,  akin  to  our  older  Elizabethan 
literature.  There  is  a  constant  play  of  great  power, 
of  imagination  as  well  as  reason,  of  spiritual  insight 
as  well  as  logical  subtlety. 

To  speak  of  Coleridge  as  an  eminently  healthy 
writer  in  the  higher  regions  of  thought  may  seem 
absurd  to  some  who  think  mainly  of  his  life,  and  the 
fatal  failure  which  characterised  it.  It  is  the  shadow 
of  this  failure  of  manliness  in  his  conduct,  as  in  that 
of  his  lifelong  friend  Charles  Lamb,  which  no  doubt 
prompted  the  great  genius  who  carried  manliness,  if 
little  sweetness,  from  his  Annandale  home,  to  paint 
both  the  one  and  the  other  in  such  darkened  colours. 
We  have  not  a  word  to  say  on  behalf  of  the  failings 
of  either.  They  were  deplorable  and  unworthy  ;  but 
it  is  the  fact  notwithstanding  that  the  minds  of  both 
retained  a  serenity  and  a  certain  touch  of  respectful- 
ness which  are  lacking  in  their  Scottish  cotemporary. 
They  were  both  finer-edged  than  Carlyle.  They  in- 
herited a  more  delicate  and  polite  personal  culture ; 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  9 

and  delicacy  can  never  be  far  distant  from  true  manli- 
ness. Neither  of  them  could  have  written  of  the 
treasures  of  old  religion  as  Carlyle  did  in  his  Life  of 
Sterling  ;  whether  they  accepted  for  themselves  these 
treasures  or  not,  they  would  have  spared  the  tender 
faith  of  others,  and  respected  an  ancient  Ideal.  And 
be  sure,  this  is  the  higher  attitude.  Nothing  which 
has  ever  deeply  interested  humanity,  or  profoundly 
moved  it,  is  treated  with  contempt  by  a  wise  and 
good  man.  It  may  call  for  and  deserve  rejection, 
but  never  insult.  Unhappily  this  attitude  of  mind, 
reseftved  as  well  as  critical,  reverent  as  well  as  bold, 
has  been  conspicuously  absent  in  some  of  the  most 
powerful  and  best-known  writers  of  our  era. 

The  Aids  to  Reflection  summon  us,  both  by  title 
and  contents,  to  thoughtfulness.  It  is  a  book  which 
none  but  a  thinker  on  Divine  things  will  ever  like. 
It  is  such  a  book  as  all  such  thinkers  have  prized. 
To  many  it  has  given  a  new  force  of  religious  insight, 
while  for  its  time,  beyond  all  doubt,  it  created  a  real 
epoch  in  Christian  thought.  It  did  this  certainly  not 
from  any  merits  as  a  literary  composition,  for  it  is 
fragmentary  throughout ;  and  the  thought  of  the 
volume  is  nowhere  wrought  into  a  complete  system. 
But  it  had  life  in  it ;  and  the  living  seed,  scattered 
and  desultory  as  it  was,  brought  forth  fruit  in  many 
minds. 

The  Evangelical  movement,  which  in  the  last  cen- 
tury kindled  so  many  hearts,  and  wrought  such  living 
Christian  energy  in  many  lives,  survived  into  the 
present  century  under  the  vigorous  guidance  of  Wil- 
berforce  and  Simeon  of  Cambridge.  It  was  still 
active,  living,  and  powerful,  although   it   had  lost  its 


lo         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

first  freshness.  Nor  was  the  AngHcan  tradition,  as 
personified  in  men  hke  Keble,  so  weak  as  has  been 
sometimes  assumed.  There  was  more  quiet  and  effec- 
tive rehgion  throughout  the  land  than  our  gener- 
ahsations  sometimes  allow;  witness,  for  example, 
among  the  Unitarians  such  a  man  as  Frederick 
Maurice's  father.  There  was,  however,  a  lack  of 
earnest  movement  save  in  the  Evangelical  direction. 
The  testimony  of  Newman  in  England,  the  career  of 
Chalmers  in  Scotland,  may  be  held  as  evidence  of 
this.  From  the  Evangelical  Succession — Wilberforce 
on  the  one  side,  and  Romaine  and  Thomas  Scott  on 
the  other — came  the  first  impulses  which  in  the 
second  decade  of  our  century  moved  these  great 
minds.  Evangelicalism  was,  in  short,  the  only  type 
of  aggressive  religion  then,  or  for  some  time,  pre- 
vailing, although  its  aggressiveness  was  more  of  a 
practical  than  of  an  intellectual  kind.  Intel- 
lectually there  was  little  or  no  directing  power  in 
the  sphere  of  religion.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
fifteen  years,  or  onwards  from  1810  to  1830,  there 
sprang  up  a  great  variety  of  new  influences :  Whately 
and  Arnold  in  England,  Thomas  Erskine  in  Scot- 
land, Newman  and  the  whole  Anglo-Catholic  host 
some  years  later.  We  shall  have  occasion  to  advert 
to  all.  But  the  movement  which  sprang  from  Cole- 
ridge claims  our  first  attention.  It  stands  upon  the 
whole  in  advance  of  the  others.  It  has  been  the 
most  fertile  and  pervasive.  All  the  other  move- 
ments may  be  said  to  have  borrowed  more  or  less 
from  Coleridge.  Whatever  he  borrowed  was  from 
Germany,  or  from  long-past  sources  of  our  own 
literature. 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  1 1 

What,  then,  were  the  characteristics  of  the  Cole- 
ridgian  movement  ?  In  what  respects  is  it  true  that 
Coleridge  gave  a  definite  impulse  to  the  rehgious 
thought  of  his  time?  In  three  respects,  as  it  appears 
to  us  :  \st,  by  a  renovation  of  current  Christian  ideas; 
2dly,  by  an  advance  in  BibHcal  study ;  and,  '^dly,  by 
an  enlarged  conception  of  the  Church. 

(i.)  Coleridge,  we  know,  was  a  man  of  many  ambi- 
tions never  realised  ;  but  of  all  his  ambitions,  the  most 
persistent  was  that  of  laying  anew  the  foundations  of 
spiritual  philosophy.  This  was  '  the  great  work ' 
to  which  he  frequently  alluded  as  having  given  '  the 
preparation  of  more  than  twenty  years  of  his  life.'  ^ 
Like  other  great  tasks  projected  by  him,  it  was  very 
imperfectly  accomplished  ;  and  there  will  always  be 
those  in  consequence  who  fail  to  understand  his  influ- 
ence as  a  leader  of  thought.  We  are  certainly  not 
bound  to  take  Coleridge  at  his  own  value,  nor  to 
attach  the  same  importance  as  he  did  to  some  of  his 
speculations.  He  failed  to  do  justice  to  them  in  more 
senses  than  one.  Nor  can  Mr.  Green's  volumes, 
reverent  and  studious  as  they  are,  be  taken  in  place 
of  an  adequate  exposition  by  the  author  himself. 
His  more  abstract  speculations,  we  confess,  do  not 
much  interest  us.  It  has  indeed  been  said  that 
Coleridge's  speculative  philosophy  lies  at  the  founda- 
tion of  all  his  theology.^  This  may  be  so  ;  to  a  large 
extent  it  is  so  ;  but  no  one  knew  better  than  Coleridge 
himself  that  there  was  nothing  new  in  his  Platonic 

^  spiritual  Philosophy,  founded  on  the  Teaching;  of  the  late  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge.     By  Jos.  Henry  Green,  F.R.S.,  D.C.L.     1865. 

■■^  This  idea  is  elaborated  in  a  clever,  but  somewhat  narrow  book. 
Modern  Anglican  Theology,  by  the  Rev.  James  H.  Rigg.     1857. 


1 2         Mdvements  of  Religious  TJio2ight. 

realism.  It  was  merely  a  restoration  of  the  old 
religious  metaphysic  which  had  preceded  '  the  me- 
chanical systems,'  ^  which  became  dominant  in  the 
reign  of  Charles  the  Second.  He  himself  constantly 
claims  to  do  nothing  more  than  re-assert  the  prin- 
ciples of  Hooker,  of  Henry  More,  of  John  Smith,  and 
Leighton,  all  of  whom  he  speaks  of  as  '  Platonizing 
divines  !  '  But  the  religious  teaching  of  Coleridge 
came  upon  his  generation  as  a  new  breath,  not 
merely  or  mainly  because  he  revived  these  ancient 
principles,  but  because  he  vitalised  anew  their  appli- 
cation to  Christianity,  so  as  to  transform  it  from  a 
mere  creed,  or  collection  of  articles,  into  a  living  mode 
of  thought,  embracing  all  human  activity. 

Coleridge  is  misjudged  when  looked  upon  as  a 
mere  theosophic  dreamer  or  ontologist.  His  Tran- 
scendentalism, borrowed  from  Kant  and  Schelling, 
his  famous  distinction  of  the  Reason  and  the  Under- 
standing, his  speculative  analysis  of  the  Trinitarian 
idea,  are  not  without  their  significance ;  but  these 
were  not  the  factors  that  made  his  teaching  influ- 
ential. Coleridge  was  no  mere  metaphysician.  He 
was  a  great  interpreter  of  spiritual  facts — a  student  of 
spiritual  life,  quickened  by  a  peculiarly  vivid  and 
painful  experience;  and  he  saw  in  Christianity,  rightly 
conceived,  at  once  the  true  explanation  of  the  facts  of 
our  spiritual  being,  and  the  true  remedy  for  their  dis- 
order. He  brought  human  nature,  in  all  the  breadth 
of  its  activities,  once  more  near  to  Christianity,  and 
found  in  the  latter  not  merely  a  means  of  salvation  in 
any  limited  evangelical  sense,  but  the  highest  Truth 
and  Health — a  perfect  Philosophy.      His  main  power 

*  See  particularly  his  own  statement. 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  1 3 

lay  in  this  subjective  direction,  just  as  here  it  was 
that  his  age  was  most  needing  stimulus  and  guidance. 
The  Evangelical  School,  with  all  its  merits,  had 
conceived  of  Christianity  rather  as  something  super- 
added to  the  highest  life  of  humanity  than  as  the 
perfect  development  of  that  life;  as  a  scheme  for 
human  salvation  authenticated  by  miracles,  and,  so 
to  speak,  interpolated  into  human  history  rather 
than  a  divine  philosophy,  witnessing  to  itself  from  the 
beginning  in  all  the  higher  phases  of  that  histoiy.  And 
so  Philosophy,  and  no  less  Literature,  and  Art,  and 
Science,  were  conceived  apart  from  religion.  The 
world  and  the  Church  were  not  only  antagonistic  in 
the  biblical  sense,  as  the  embodiments  of  the  Carnal 
and  the  Divine  Spirit — which  they  must  ever  be;  but 
they  were,  so  to  speak,  severed  portions  of  life  divided 
by  outward  signs  and  badges  ;  and  those  who  joined 
the  one  or  the  other  were  supposed  to  be  clearly 
marked  off  All  who  know  the  writings  of  the  Evan- 
gelical School  of  the  eighteenth  and  earlier  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  from  the  poetiy  of  Cowper 
and  the  letters  of  his  friend  Newton,  to  the  writings 
of  Romaine,  John  Foster,  and  Wilberforce,  and 
even  Chalmers,  will  know  how  such  commonplaces 
everywhere  reappear  in  them.  That  they  were 
associated  with  the  most  devout  and  beautiful  lives, 
that  they  even  served  to  foster  a  peculiar  ardour 
of  Christian  feeling  and  love  of  God,  cannot  be 
disputed.  But  they  were  essentially  narrow  and 
false.  They  destroyed  the  largeness  and  unity  of 
human  experience.  They  not  merely  separated 
religion  from  art  and  philosophy,  but  they  tended  to 
separate  it  from  morality. 


14         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Coleridge's  most  distinctive  work  was  to  restore 
the  broken  harmony  between  reason  and  reUgion, 
by  enlarging  the  conception  of  both,  but  of  the 
latter  especially, — by  showing  how  man  is  essentially 
a  religious  being  having  a  definite  spiritual  constitu- 
tion, apart  from  which  the  very  idea  of  religion 
becomes  impossible.  Religion  is  not  therefore  some- 
thing brought  to  man  ;  it  is  his  highest  education. 
Religion,  he  says,  was  designed  '  to  improve  the 
nature  and  faculties  of  man,  in  order  to  the  right 
governing  of  our  actions,  to  the  securing  the  peace 
and  progress,  external  and  internal,  of  individuals 
and  of  communities.'  ^  Christianity  is  in  the  highest 
degree  adapted  to  this  end ;  and  nothing  can  be  a 
part  of  it  that  is  not  duly  proportioned  thereto. 

In  thus  vindicating  the  rationality  of  religion, 
Coleridge  had  a  twofold  task  before  him  as  every  such 
thinker  has.  He  had  to  assert  against  the  Epicurean 
and  Empirical  School  the  spiritual  constitution  of 
human  nature,  and  against  the  fanatical  or  hyper- 
evangelical  school  the  reasonable  working  of  spiritual 
influence.  He  had  to  maintain,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
essential  divinity  of  man,  that  '  there  is  more  in  him 
than  can  be  rationally  referred  to  the  life  of  nature  and 
the  mechanism  of  organisation,'  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  show  that  this  higher  life  of  the  spirit  is 
throughout  rational — that  it  is  superstition  and  not 
true  religion  which  professes  to  resolve  '  men's  faith 
and  practice  '  into  the  illumination  of  such  a  spirit 
as  they  can  give  no  account  of, — such  as  does  not 
enlighten  their  reason  or  enable  them  to  render  their 
doctrine   intelligible   to   others.     He  fights,  in  short, 

^  Aids  to  Reflection  (ed.  1848),  vol.  i.  p.  143. 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  \  5 

alike   against   materialistic    negation    and    credulous 
enthusiasm. 

The  former  he  meets  with  the  assertion  of  '  a 
ipirituality  in  man,' — a  self-power  or  Will  at  the  root 
of  all  his  being.  '  If  there  be  ought  spiritual  in  man, 
the  will  must  be  such.  If  there  be  a  will,  there  must 
be  a  spirituality  in  man.'  He  assumes  both  positions, 
seeing  clearly — what  all  who  radically  deal  with  such 
a  question  must  see — that  it  becomes  in  the  end  an 
alternative  postulate  on  one  side  and  the  other.  The 
theologian  cannot  prove  his  case,  because  the  very 
terms  in  which  it  must  be  proved  are  alreiady  denied 
ab  initio  by  the  materialist.  But  no  more  can  the 
materialist,  for  the  same  reason,  refute  the  spiritual 
thinker.  There  can  be  no  argument  where  no  common 
premiss  is  granted.  Coleridge  was  quite  alive  to 
this,  yet  he  validly  appeals  to  common  experi- 
ence. '  I  assume,'  he  says,  '  a  something  the  proof 
of  which  no  man  can  give  to  another,  yet  every 
man  may  find  for  himself  If  any  man  assert  that 
he  has  no  such  experience,  I  am  bound  to  disbelieve 
him,  I  cannot  do  otherwise  without  unsettling  the 
foundation  of  my  own  moral  nature.  For  I  either 
find  it  as  an  essential  of  the  humanity  common  to 
him  and  to  me,  or  I  have  not  found  it  at  all.  ...  All  the 
significant  objections  of  the  materialist  and  necessi- 
tarian,' he  adds,  '  are  contained  in  the  term  morality, 
and  all  the  objections  of  the  infidel  in  the  term 
religion.  These  very  terms  imply  something  granted, 
which  the  objector  in  each  case  supposes  not  granted, 
A  moral  philosophy  is  only  such  because  it  assumes 
a  principle  of  morality,  a  will  in  man,  and  so  a 
Christian  philosophy  or  theology  has  its  own  assump- 


1 6         Movements  of  Religions  TJioiight. 

tions  resting  on  three  ultimate  facts,  namely,  the 
reality  of  the  law  of  conscience  ;  the  existence  of  a 
responsible  will  as  the  subject  of  that  law;  and  lastly, 
the  existence  of  God.'  .  .  .  '  The  first  is  a  fact  of  con- 
sciousness ;  the  second,  a  fact  of  reason  necessarily 
concluded  from  the  first ;  and  the  third,  a  fact  of 
history  interpreted  by  both.' 

These  were  the  radical  data  of  the  religious 
philosophy  of  Coleridge.  They  imply  a  general 
conception  of  religion  which  was  revolutionary  for  his 
age,  simple  and  ancient  as  the  principles  are.  The 
evangelical  tradition  brought  religion  to  man  from 
the  outside.  It  took  no  concern  of  man's  spiritual 
constitution  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was  a  sinner  and 
in  danger  of  hell.  Coleridge  started  from  a  similar 
but  larger  experience,  including  not  only  sin,  but  the 
whole  spiritual  basis  on  which  sin  rests.  '  I  profess 
a  deep  conviction,'  he  says,  '  that  man  is  a  fallen 
creature,'  '  not  by  accident  of  bodily  constitution  or 
any  other  cause,  but  as  diseased  in  his  will — in  that 
will  which  is  the  true  and  only  strict  synonyme  of 
the  word  I,  or  the  intelligent  Self  This  '  intelligent 
self  is  a  fundamental  conception  lying  at  the  root 
of  his  system  of  thought.  Sin  is  an  attribute  of  it, 
and  cannot  be  conceived  apart  from  it,  and  conscience, 
or  the  original  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  governing 
the  will.  Apart  from  these  internal  realities  there  is 
no  religion,  and  the  function  of  the  Christian  Revela- 
tion is  to  build  up  the  spiritual  life  out  of  these 
realities — to  remedy  the  evil,  to  enlighten  the  con- 
science, to  educate  the  will.  This  effective  power  of 
religion  comes  directly  from  God  in  Christ. 

Here  Coleridge  joins   the   Evangelical    School,  as 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  1 7 

indeed  every  school  of  living  Christian  Faith.  This 
was  the  element  of  truth  he  found  in  the  doctrine  of 
Election  as  handled  '  practically,  morally,  humanly,' 
by  Leighton.  Every  true  Christian,  he  argues,  must 
attribute  his  distinction  not  in  any  degree  to  himself 
— '  his  own  resolves  and  strivings,'  '  his  own  will  and 
understanding,'  still  less  to '  his  own  comparative  excel- 
lence,'— but  to  God,  'the  Being  in  whom  the  promise 
of  life  originated,  and  on  whom  its  fulfilment  de- 
pends.' Election  so  far  is  a  truth  of  experience. 
'This  the  conscience  requires;  this  the  highest 
interests  of  morality  demand.'  So  far  it  is  a  question 
of  facts  with  which  the  speculative  reason  has  nothing 
to  do.  But  when  the  theological  reasoner  abandons 
the  ground  of  fact  and  'the  safe  circle  of  religion  and 
practical  reason  for  the  shifting  sandwastes  and 
mirages  of  speculative  theology ' — then  he  uses 
words  without  meaning.  He  can  have  no  insight 
into  the  workings  or  plans  of  a  Being  who  is  neither 
an  object  of  his  senses  nor  a  part  of  his  self-con- 
sciousness. 

Nothing  can  show  better  than  this  brief  exposition 
how  closely  Coleridge  in  his  theology  clung  to  a  base 
of  spiritual  experience,  and  sought  to  measure  even 
the  most  abstruse  Christian  mysteries  by  facts.  The 
same  thing  may  be  shown  by  referring  to  his  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  which  has  been  supposed  the  most 
transcendental  and,  so  to  speak,  'Neo-Platonist'  of  all 
his  doctrines.  But  truly  speaking  his  Trinitarianism 
like  his  doctrine  of  Election  is  a  moral  rather  than  a 
speculative  truth.  The  Trinitarian  idea  was  indeed 
true  to  him  notionally.  The  full  analysis  of  the 
notion  '  God '  seemed  to  him  to  involve  it.      '  I  find  a 

£ 


1 8         Movements  of  Religious  ThougJit. 

certain  notion  in  my  mind,  and  say  that  is  what  I 
understand  by  the  term  God.  From  books  and  con- 
versation I  find  that  the  learned  generally  connect 
the  same  notion  with  the  same  word.  I  then  apply 
the  rules  laid  down  by  the  masters  of  logic  for  the 
involution  and  evolution  of  terms,  and  prove  (to  as 
many  as  agree  with  my  premisses)  that  the  notion 
"God"  involves  the  notion  "Trinity."  '  So  he  argued, 
and  many  times  recurred  to  the  same  Transcendental 
analysis.  But  the  truer  and  more  urgent  spiritual 
basis  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  even  to  his  own 
mind,  was  not  its  notional  but  its  moral  necessity. 
Christ  could  only  be  a  Saviour  as  being  Divine.  Sal- 
vation is  a  Divine  work.  'The  idea  of  Redemption 
involves  belief  in  the  Divinity  of  our  Lord.  And 
our  Lord's  Divinity  again  involves  the  Trinitarian 
idea,  because  in  and  through  this  idea  alone  the 
Divinity  of  Christ  can  be  received  without  breach 
of  faith  in  the  Unity  of  the  Godhead.'  In  other 
words,  the  best  evidence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
is  the  compulsion  of  the  spiritual  conscience  which 
demands  a  Divine  Saviour ;  and  only  in  and  through 
the  great  idea  of  Trinity  in  Unity  does  this  demand 
become  consistent  with  Christian  Monotheism.^ 

These  doctrines  are  merely  used  in  illustration,  as 
they  are  by  Coleridge  himself  in  his  Aids  to  Reflec- 

^This  was  a  favourite  thought  with  Coleridge,  as,  for  example,  in 
his  Literary  Rcrnains  (vol.  i.  pp.  393-4) : — '  The  Trinity  of  Persons  in 
the  Unity  of  the  Godhead  would  have  been  a  necessary  idea  of  my 
speculative  reason.  God  must  have  had  co-eternally  an  adequate  idea 
of  Himself  in  and  through  which  He  created  all  things.  But  this 
would  have  been  a  mere  speculative  idea.  Solely  in  consequence  of 
our  redemption  does  the  Trinity  become  a  doctrine,  the  belief  of  which 
as  real  is  commanded  by  conscience.' 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  19 

tiott.  We  do  not  dwell  upon  them.  But  nothing 
can  show  in  a  stronger  light  the  general  character  of 
the  change  which  he  wrought  in  the  conception  of 
Christianity.  From  being  a  mere  traditional  creed, 
with  Anglican  and  Evangelical,  and  it  may  be  added 
Unitarian,  alike,  it  became  a  living  expression  of  the 
spiritual  consciousness.  In  a  sense,  of  course,  it  had 
always  been  so.  The  Evangelical  made  much  of  its 
living  power,  but  only  in  a  practical  and  not  in  a 
rational  sense.  It  is  the  distinction  of  Coleridge  to 
have  once  more  in  his  age  made  Christian  doctrine 
alive  to  the  Reason  as  well  as  the  Conscience, — 
tenable  as  a  philosophy  as  well  as  an  evangel.  And 
this  he  did  by  interpreting  Christianity  in  the  light 
of  our  moral  and  spiritual  life.  There  are  aspects 
of  Christian  truth  beyond  us.  Exeunt  in  niysteria. 
But  all  Christian  truth  must  have  vital  touch  with 
our  spiritual  being,  and  be  so  far  at  least  capable  of 
being  rendered  in  its  terms,  or,  in  other  words,  be 
conformable  to  reason. 

There  was  nothing  absolutely  new  in  this  luminous 
conception  ;  but  it  marked  a  revolution  of  religious 
thought  in  the  earlier  part  of  our  century.  The  great 
principle  of  the  Evangelical  Theology  was  that 
theological  dogmas  were  true  or  false  without  any 
reference  to  a  subjective  standard  of  judgment. 
They  were  true  as  pure  data  of  Revelation,  or  as  the 
propositions  of  an  authorised  creed  settled  long  ago. 
Reason  had,  so  far,  nothing  to  do  with  them. 
Christian  truth,  it  was  supposed,  lay  at  hand  in  the 
Bible,  an  appeal  to  which  settled  everything. 
Coleridge  did  not  undervalue  the  Bible.  He  gave  it 
an  intellifrent  reverence.      But  he  no  less  reverenced 


20         Movements  of  Religious  ThougJit. 

the  spiritual  consciousness  or  Divine  light  in  man, 
and  to  put  out  this  light,  as  the  Evangelical  had  gone 
far  to  do,  was  to  destroy  all  reasonable  faith.  This 
must  rest  not  merely  on  objective  data,  but  on  internal 
experience.  It  must  have  not  merely  authority 
without,  but  rationale  within.  It  must  answer  to  the 
highest  aspiration  of  human  reason,  as  well  as  the 
most  urgent  necessities  of  human  life.  It  must  inter- 
pret reason  and  find  expression  in  the  voice  of  our 
higher  humanity,  and  so  enlarge  itself  as  to  meet  all 
its  needs. 

If  we  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  special  exposition 
of  the  doctrines  of  Sin  and  Redemption  which  Cole- 
ridge has  given  in  the  Aids  to  Reflection,  it  is  still 
mainly  with  the  view  of  bringing  out  more  clearly  his 
general  conception  of  Christianity  as  a  living  move- 
ment of  thought  rather  than  a  mere  series  of  articles 
or  a  traditionary  creed. 

In  dealing  first  with  the  question  of  sin  he  shows 
how  its  very  idea  is  only  tenable  on  the  ground  of 
such  a  spiritual  constitution  in  man  as  he  has  already 
asserted.  It  is  only  the  recognition  of  a  true  will  in 
man — a  spirit  or  supernatural  in  man,  although  '  not 
necessarily  miraculous,' — which  renders  sin  possible. 
'These  views  of  the  spirit  and  of  the  will  as  spiritual,' 
he  says  more  than  once,  'are  the  groundwork  of  my 
scheme.'  There  was  nothing  more  significant  or  funda- 
mental in  all  his  theology.  If  there  is  not  always 
a  supernatural  element  in  man  in  the  shape  of  spirit 
and  will,  no  miracles  or  anything  else  can  ever  au- 
thenticate the  supernatural  to  him.  A  mere  formal 
orthodoxy,  therefore,  hanging  upon  the  evidence  of 
miracles,   is   a   suspension   bridge    without   any   real 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  2 1 


"ii 


support.  So  all  questions  between  Infidelity  and 
Christianity  are  questions  here  at  the  root,  and  not 
what  are  called  '  critical '  questions  as  to  whether  this 
or  that  view  of  the  Bible  be  right,  or  this  or  that 
traditionary  dogma  be  true.  Such  questions  are 
truly  speaking  inter-Christian  questions,  the  freest 
views  of  which  all  churches  must  learn  to  tolerate. 
The  really  vital  question  is  whether  there  is  a  divine 
root  in  man  at  all — a  spiritual  centre  answering  to  a 
higher  spiritual  centre  in  the  universe.  All  contro- 
versies of  any  importance  come  back  to  this.  Cole- 
ridge would  have  been  a  great  Christian  thinker  if 
for  no  other  reason  than  this,  that  he  brought  all 
theological  problems  back  to  this  living  centre,  and 
showed  how  they  diverged  from  it.  Apart  from  this 
postulate,  sin  was  inconceivable  to  him;  and  in  the 
same  manner  all  sin  was  to  him  sin  of  origin  or 
'  original  sin.'  It  is  the  essential  property  of  the  will 
that  it  can  originate.  The  phrase  original  sin  is  there- 
fore *a  pleonasm.'  If  sin  was  not  original,  or  from 
within  the  will  itself,  it  would  not  deserve  the 
name.  '  A  state  or  act  that  has  not  its  origin  in  the 
will  may  be  a  calamity,  deformity,  disease,  or  mis- 
chief; but  a  sin  it  cannot  be.* 

We  may  be  pardoned  for  adducing  a  still  longer 
illustration  of  his  mode  of  argument.  '  A  moral  evil 
is  an  evil  that  has  its  origin  in  a  will.  An  evil  com- 
mon to  all  must  have  a  ground  common  to  all.  But 
the  actual  existence  of  moral  evil  we  are  bound  in 
conscience  to  admit ;  and  that  there  is  an  evil  com- 
mon to  all  is  a  fact,  and  this  evil  must  therefore  have 
a  common  ground.  Now  this  evil  ground  cannot 
originate    in   the    Divine  will ;    it   must   therefore  be 


2  2         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

referred  to  the  will  of  man.  And  this  evil  ground 
we  call  original  sin.  It  is  a  mystery,  that  is  a  fact 
which  we  see  but  cannot  explain,  and  the  doctrine 
a  truth  which  we  apprehend,  but  can  neither  com- 
prehend nor  communicate.  And  such  by  the  quality 
of  the  subject  (namely,  a  responsible  will)  it  must  be, 
if  it  be  truth  at  all.' 

This  inwardness  is  no  less  characteristic  of  Cole- 
ridge's treatment  of  the  doctrine  of  Atonement  or 
Redemption.  It  is  intelligible  so  far  as  it  comes 
within  the  range  of  spiritual  experience,  just  as  the 
doctrine  of  sin  is.  So  far,  its  nature  and  effects  are 
amply  described  or  figured  in  the  New  Testament, 
especially  by  St.  Paul.  And  the  apostle's  language, 
as  might  be  expected,  '  takes  its  predominant  colours 
from  his  own  experience,  and  the  experience  of  those 
whom  he  addressed.'  '  His  figures,  images,  analogies, 
and  references,'  are  all  more  or  less  borrowed  from 
this  source.  He  describes  the  Atonement  of  Christ 
under  four  principal  metaphors  : — i.  Sin-offerings, 
sacrificial  expiation.  2.  Reconciliation,  atonement, 
xaraXXayrj.  3.  Redemption,  or  ransom  from  slavery. 
4.  Satisfaction,  payment  of  a  debt.  These  phrases 
are  not  designed  to  convey  to  us  all  the  Divine 
meaning  of  the  Atonem.ent,  for  no  phrases  or  figures 
can  do  this ;  but  they  set  forth  its  general  aspects 
and  design  in  so  far  as  we,  no  less  than  the  Jews  and 
Greeks  of  the  time,  are  interested  in  the  doctrine. 
One  and  all  they  have  an  intelligible  relation  to  our 
spiritual  life,  and  so  clothe  the  doctrine  for  us  with 
a  concrete  living  and  practical  meaning.  But  there 
are  other  relations  and  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of 
Atonement  that    transcend    experience,   and    conse- 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  23 

quently  our  powers  of  understanding.  And  all  that 
can  be  said  here  is  Exit  in  niysteria.  The  rationalism 
of  Coleridge  is  at  least  a  modest  and  self-limiting 
rationalism.  It  clears  the  ground  within  the  range  of 
spiritual  experience,  and  floods  this  ground  with  the 
light  of  reason.  There  is  no  true  doctrine  that  can 
contradict  this  light,  or  shelter  itself  from  its  penetra- 
tion. But  there  are  aspects  of  Christian  doctrine  that 
outreach  all  grasp  of  reason,  and  before  which  reason 
must  simply  be  silent.  For  example,  the  Divine  Act 
in  Redemption  is  '  a  Causative  Act — a  spiritual  and 
transcendent  mystery  tliat  passeth  all  understanding. 
"W/w  knowetli  the  mind  of  the  Loj'd,  or  being  his 
counsellor  hath  instructed  himf"  Factum  est.'  This 
is  all  that  can  be  said  of  the  mystery  of  Redemp- 
tion, or  of  the  doctrine  of  Atonement,  on  its  Divine 
side. 

And  here  emerges  another  important  principle 
of  the  Coleridgian  theology.  While  so  great  an 
advocate  of  the  rights  of  reason  in  theology,  of  the 
necessity,  in  other  words,  of  moulding  all  its  facts  in 
a  synthesis  intelligible  to  the  higher  reason,  he 
recognises  strongly  that  there  is  a  province  of  Divine 
truth  beyond  all  such  construction.  We  can  never 
understand  the  fulness  of  Divine  mystery,  and  it  is 
hopeless  to  attempt  to  do  so.  While  no  mind  was 
less  agnostic  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term,  he  was 
yet,  with  all  his  vivid  and  large  intuition,  a  Christian 
agnostic.  Just  because  Christianity  was  Divine,  a 
revelation,  and  not  a  mere  human  tradition,  all  its 
higher  doctrines  ended  in  a  region  beyond  our  clear 
knowledge.  As  he  himself  said,  '  If  the  doctrine  is 
more   than   a   hyperbolical   phrase,    it   must   do   so.' 


24         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

There  was  great  pregnancy  in  this  as  in  his  other 
conceptions ;  and  probably  no  more  significant 
change  awaits  the  theology  of  the  future  than  the 
recognition  of  this  province  of  the  unknown,  and 
the  cessation  of  controversy  as  to  matters  which 
come  within  it,  and  therefore  admit  of  no  dogmatic 
settlement. 

(2.)  But  it  is  more  than  time  to  turn  to  the  second 
aspect,  in  which  Coleridge  appears  as  a  religious  leader 
of  the  thought  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  Co7t- 
fcssions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit  were  not  published  till 
six  years  after  his  death,  in  1840;  and  it  is  curious  to 
notice  their  accidental  connection  with  the  Confessions 
of  a  Bcmitifnl  Soul,  which  had  been  translated  by 
Carlyle  some  years  before.^  These  Confessions,  in 
the  shape  of  seven  letters  to  a  friend,  gather  together 
all  that  is  valuable  in  the  Biblical  Criticism  of  the 
author  scattered  through  his  various  writings ;  and 
although  it  may  be  doubtful  whether  the  volume  has 
ever  attained  the  circulation  of  the  Aids  to  Reflec- 
tion, it  is  eminently  deserving — small  as  it  is,  nay, 
because  of  its  very  brevity — of  a  place  beside  the 
larger  work.  It  is  eminently  readable,  terse  and 
nervous,  as  well  as  eloquent  in  style.  In  none  of  his 
writings  does  Coleridge  appear  to  greater  advantage, 
or  touch  a  more  elevating  strain,  rising  at  times  into 
solemn  music. 

The  Confessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit  were  of 
course  merely  one  indication  of  the  rise  of  a  true 
spirit  of  criticism  in  English  theology.  Arnold 
Whately,  Thirlwall,  and  others,  it  will  be  seen 
were  all  astir  in  the  same  direction,  even  before  the 

'  In  his  well-known  translation  of   VVillielm  Meister. 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  25 

Confessions  were  published.  The  notion  of  verbal 
inspiration,  or  the  infalHble  dictation  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, could  not  possibly  continue  after  the  modern 
spirit  of  historical  inquiry  had  begun.  As  soon  as 
men  plainly  recognised  the  organic  growth  of  all  great 
facts,  literary  as  well  as  others,  it  was  inevitable  that 
they  should  see  the  Scriptures  in  a  new  light,  as 
a  product  of  many  phases  of  thought  in  course  of 
more  or  less  perfect  development.  A  larger  and 
more  intelligent  sense  of  the  conditions  attending 
the  origin  and  progress  of  all  civilisation,  and  of 
the  immaturities  through  which  religious  as  well  as 
moral  and  social  ideas  advance,  necessarily  carried 
with  it  a  changed  perception  of  the  characteristics 
of  Scriptural  revelation.  The  old  Rabbinical  notion 
of  an  infallible  text  was  sure  to  disappear.  The 
new  critical  method,  besides,  is  in  Coleridge's  hands 
rather  an  idea — a  happy  and  germinant  thought — 
than  a  well-evolved  system.  Still  to  him  belongs 
the  honour  of  having  first  plainly  and  boldly  an- 
nounced that  the  Scriptures  were  to  be  read  and 
studied,  like  any  other  literature,  in  the  light  of  their 
continuous  growth,  and  the  adaptation  of  their  parts 
to  one  another. 

The  divinity  of  Scripture  appears  all  the  more 
brightly  when  thus  freely  handled.  '  I  take  up  this 
work,'  he  says,  'with  the  purpose  to  read  it  for  the 
first  time  as  I  should  read  any  other  work — as  far  at 
least  as  I  can  or  dare.  For  I  neither  can,  nor  dare, 
throw  off  a  strong  and  awful  prepossession  in  its 
favour — certain  as  I  am  that  a  large  part  of  the  light 
and  life,  in  and  by  which  I  see,  love,  and  embrace  the 
truths   and  the  strengths  co-organised  into  a   living 


26         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

body  of  faith  and  knowledge  has  been  directly  or 
indirectly  derived  to  me  from  this  sacred  volume.' 
All  the  more  reason  why  we  should  not  make  a  fetish 
of  the  Bible,  as  the  Turk  does  of  the  Koran.  Poor  as 
reason  may  be  in  comparison  with  'the  power  and 
splendour  of  the  Scriptures,'  yet  it  is  and  must  be  for 
him  a  true  light.  '  While  there  is  a  Light  higher  than 
all,  even  the  Word  that  was  in  the  beginning ; — the 
Light,  of  which  light  itself  is  but  the  shechinah  and 
cloudy  tabernacle ; ' — there  is  also  a  '  Light  that 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world ; '  and 
the  spirit  of  man  is  declared  to  be  '  the  candle  of  the 
Lord.'  '  If  between  this  Word,'  he  says,  '  and  the 
written  Letter  I  shall  anywhere  seem  to  myself  to 
find  a  discrepance,  I  will  not  conclude  that  such  there 
actually  is ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  will  I  fall  under 
the  condemnation  of  them  that  would  lie  for  God,  but 
seek  as  I  may,  be  thankful  for  what  I  have — and  wait' 

Such  is  the  keynote  of  the  volume.  The  supremacy 
of  the  Bible  as  a  divinely  inspired  literature  is  plainly 
recognised  from  the  first.  Obviously  it  is  a  book 
above  all  other  books  in  which  deep  answers  to  deep, 
and  our  inmost  thoughts  and  most  hidden  griefs  find 
not  merely  response,  but  guidance  and  assuagement. 
And  whatever  there  finds  us  '  bears  witness  for  itself 
that  it  has  proceeded  from  the  Holy  Spirit.'  '  In  the 
Bible,'  he  says  again,  '  there  is  more  \\\2X  finds  me  than 
I  have  experienced  in  all  other  books  put  together ; 
the  words  of  the  Bible  find  me  at  greater  depths  of 
my  being ;  and  whatever  finds  me  brings  with  it  an 
irresistible  evidence  of  its  having  proceeded  from  the 
Holy  Spirit' 

But  there  is  much  in  the  Bible  that  not  only  does 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  27 

not  find  us  in  the  Coleridgian  sense,  but  that  seems 
full  of  contradictions,  both  moral  and  historical ;  the 
psalms  in  which  David  curses  his  enemies ;  the 
obviously  exaggerated  ages  attributed  to  the  patri- 
archs ;  and  the  incredible  number  of  the  armies  said 
to  be  collected  by  Abijah  and  Jeroboam  (2  Chron. 
xiii.  3),  and  other  instances  familiar  to  all  students  of 
Scripture.  What  is  to  be  made  of  such  features  of  the 
Bible?  According  to  the  old  notion  of  its  infalli- 
bility such  parts  of  Scripture,  no  less  than  its  most 
elevating  utterances  of 'lovely  hymn  and  choral  song 
and  accepted  prayers  of  saint  and  prophet,'  were  to  be 
received  as  dictated  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  They  were 
stamped  with  the  same  Divine  authority.  Coleridge 
rightly  enough  emphasises  this  view  as  that  of  the 
Fathers  and  Reformers  alike;  but  he  no  less  rightly 
points  out  that  not  one  of  them  is  consistent  in  hold- 
ing to  their  general  doctrine.  Their  treatment  of  the 
Scriptures  in  detail  constantly  implies  the  fallacy  of 
the  Rabbinical  tradition  to  which  they  yet  clung.  He 
no  less  forcibly  points  out  that  the  Scriptures  them- 
selves make  no  such  pretension  to  infallibility,  '  expli- 
citly or  by  implication.'  '  On  the  contrary,  they  refer 
to  older  documents,  and  on  all  points  express  them- 
selves as  sober-minded  and  veracious  writers  under 
ordinary  circumstances  are  known  to  do.'  The  usual 
texts  quoted,  such  as  2  Tim.  iii.  16,  have  no  real 
bearing  on  the  subject.  The  little  we  know  as  to 
the  origin  and  history  of  many  of  the  books  of  the 
Bible,  of  '  the  time  of  the  formation  and  closing  of 
the  canon,'  of  its  selectors  and  compilers,  is  all 
opposed  to  such  a  theory.  Moreover,  the  very 
nature  of  the   claim  stultifies   itself  when  examined. 


28         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

For  '  how  can   infallible  truth  be  infallibly  conveyed 
in  defective  and  fallible  expression  ? ' 

But  it  may  be  asked,  as  it  has  been  often  asked, 
where  is  this  selective  process  to  stop  ?  If  the  Bible 
as  a  whole  is  not  infallibly  inspired,  how  are  we  to 
know  what  is  of  Divine  authority  and  what  is  not? 
The  only  answer  to  such  a  question  is  the  answer 
of  common  sense  given  in  all  other  cases.  The 
higher  thought  and  power  of  any  writing  is  self- 
revealing.  It  is  not  to  be  mistaken.  It  takes  cap- 
tive the  reason  as  well  as  the  conscience.  If  I  speak 
enthusiastically  of  Shakespeare,  and  of  the  well-nigh 
divine  wisdom  of  many  of  his  plays,  do  I  thereby  re- 
ceive all  that  Shakespeare  writes  as  elevating  or 
good  ?  Do  I  pronounce  any  opinion  as  to  the  ques- 
tion respecting  Titus  Andronicus,  or  the  larger 
portion  of  the  three  parts  of  Henry  vi.?  Shake- 
speare in  ordinary  speech  stands  for  the  unity  of 
genius  which  his  works  represent.  In  this  is  also  to 
be  found  the  true  explanation  of  the  words  of  our 
Lord  in  speaking  of  Moses  and  the  prophets.  In 
using  such  expressions  our  Lord  does  not  mean  to 
indicate  any  opinion  of  the  authenticity  of  the  books 
of  Moses,  or  of  the  infallible  authority  of  all  con- 
tained in  the  Old  Testament ;  but  only  to  appeal  to 
the  unity  of  Divine  light  which  the  Jews  themselves 
recognised  in  the  Holy  Scriptures.  They  owned 
a  Divine  authority  contained  in  certain  writings. 
Moses  was  par  excellence  their  Divine  teacher.  If 
only  they  had  understood  their  own  Scriptures,  they 
would  have  known  that  Moses  spake  of  Him.  The 
argument  thus  used  by  our  Lord  was  conclusive. 
In  the  light  of  their  own    belief  it  left  no  escape  to 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  29 

thjm,  and  this  was  beyond  doubt  all  that  our  Lord 
meant  by  such  an  appeal.  To  suppose  that  he  im- 
plied further  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Moses 
is  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch  as  a  whole,  or  that 
every  word  of  it  was  dictated  by  God  to  Moses,  is  to 
suppose  something  not  only  absurd  in  itself,  but 
utterly  irrelevant  to  the  purpose  in  view.  So  in  effect 
Coleridsfe  arg-ued  and  with  a  force  as  irresistible  as 
it  was  new  in  his  day. 

But  if  the  tenet  of  verbal  inspiration  has  been  so 
long  received  and  acted  on  '  by  Jew  and  Christian, 
Greek,  Roman,  and  Protestant,  why  can  it  not  now 
be  received  ?  '  '  For  every  reason,'  answered  Coleridge, 
'  that  makes  me  prize  and  revere  these  Scriptures  ; — 
prize  them,  love  them,  revere  them  beyond  all  other 
books.'  Because  such  a  tenet  '  falsifies  at  once  the 
whole  body  of  holy  writ,  with  all  its  harmonious  and 
symmetrical  gradations.'  It  turns  '  the  breathing 
organism  into  a  colossal  Memnon's  head,  a  hollow 
passage  for  a  voice,'  which  no  man  hath  uttered,  and 
no  human  heart  hath  conceived.  It  evacuates  of  all 
sense  and  efficacy  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is  a  Divine 
literature  of  many  books  '  composed  in  different  and 
widely  distant  ages,  under  the  greatest  diversity  of 
circumstances,  and  degrees  of  light  and  information.' 
So  he  argues  in  language  I  have  partly  quoted  and 
partly  summarised.  And  then  he  breaks  forth  into 
a  magnificent  passage  about  the  song  of  Deborah, 
a  passage  of  rare  eloquence  with  all  its  desultoriness, 
but  which  will  hardly  bear  separation  from  the 
context.  The  wail  of  the  Jewish  heroine's  maternal 
and  patriotic  love  is  heard  under  all  her  cursing 
and    individualism — mercy     rejoicing    against    judg- 


30         Movements  of  Religious  TJiought, 

ment.  In  the  very  intensity  of  her  primary  affections 
is  found  the  rare  strength  of  her  womanhood,  and 
sweetness  Hes  near  to  fierceness.  Such  passages  pro- 
bably give  us  a  far  better  idea  of  the  occasional  glory 
of  the  old  man's  talk  as  '  he  sat  on  the  brow  of  High- 
gate  Hill,'  than  any  poor  fragments  that  have  been 
preserved.  Direct  and  to  the  point  it  may  never 
have  been,  but  at  times  it  rose  into  an  organ  swell 
with  snatches  of  unutterable  melody  and  power. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  is  that  the  divinity  of 
Scripture  resides  not  in  the  letter  but  in  the  spirit, 
in  the  unity  of  Divine  impression  which  they  convey. 
And  historical  criticism  has  precisely  the  same  task 
in  reference  to  the  Bible  as  any  other  collection  of 
ancient  and  sacred  writings.  An  undevout  criticism 
will  no  doubt  blunder  and  misinterpret,  as  an 
ungenial  and  inappropriate  criticism  must  always 
do  in  every  direction.  But  a  false  can  only  be  corrected 
by  a  true  criticism,  and  a  narrow  and  meagre  ration- 
alism by  a  profound  and  enlightened  sacred  learning, 
capable  of  understanding  the  depths  of  the  spiritual 
life,  while  rigorously  testing  all  its  conclusions  and 
processes  of  development,  both  moral  and  historical, 
intellectual  and  ethical. 

(3.)  But  Coleridge  contributed  still  another  factor  to 
the  impulsion  of  religious  thought  in  his  time.  He 
did  much  to  revive  the  historic  idea  of  the  Church  as 
an  intellectual  as  well  as  a  spiritual  commonwealth. 
Like  many  other  ideas  of  our  older  national  life  this 
had  been  depressed  and  lost  sight  of  during  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  evangelical  party,  deficient 
in  learning  generally,  was  especially  deficient  in 
breadth    of  historical  knowledge.     Milner's  History, 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  3 1 

if  nothing  else,  serves  to  point  this  conclusion.  The 
idea  of  the  Church  as  the  mother  of  philosophy,  and 
arts,  and  learning,  as  well  as  the  nurse  of  faith  and 
piety,  v/as  unknown.  It  was  a  part  of  the  evangelical 
creed,  moreover,  to  leave  aside  as  far  as  possible  mere 
political  and  intellectual  interests.  These  belonged 
to  the  world,  and  the  main  business  of  the  religious 
man  was  with  religion  as  a  personal  affair,  of  vast 
moment,  but  outside  all  other  affairs.  Coleridee 
helped  once  more  to  bring  the  Church  as  he  did  the 
Gospel  into  larger  room  as  a  great  spiritual  power  of 
manifold  influence. 

The  volume  On  the  Constitution  of  Church  and  State 
according  to  the  idea  of  each  was  published  in  1830, 
and  was  the  last  volume  which  the  author  himself 
published.  The  Catholic  emancipation  question  had 
greatly  excited  the  public  mind,  and  some  friend  had 
appealed  to  Coleridge  expressing  astonishment  that 
he  should  be  in  opposition  to  the  proposed  measure. 
He  replied  that  he  is  by  no  means  unfriendly  to 
Catholic  emancipation,  while  yet  '  scrupling  the 
means  proposed  for  its  attainment'  And  in  order  to 
explain  his  difficulties  he  composed  a  long  letter  to  his 
friend  which  is  really  an  essay  or  treatise,  beginning 
with  the  fundamental  principles  of  his  philosophy 
and  ending  with  a  description  of  antichrist.  The 
essay  is  one  of  the  least  satisfactory  of  his  composi- 
tions from  a  mere  literary  point  of  view,  and  is  not 
even  mentioned  by  Mr.  Traill  in  his  recent  mono- 
graph. But  amidst  all  its  involutions  and  ramblings 
it  is  stimulating  and  full  of  thought  on  a  subject 
which  almost  more  than  any  other  is  liable  to  be  de- 
graded by  unworthy  and  sectarian  treatment.     Here, 


32         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

as  everywhere  in  Coleridge's  writings,  we  are  brought 
in  contact  with  certain  large  conceptions  which  far 
more  than  cover  the  immediate  subject  in  hand. 

It  has  been  sometimes  supposed  that  Coleridge's 
theory  of  the  church  merely  revived  the  old  theory 
of  the  Elizabethan  age  so  powerfully  advocated  by 
Hooker,  and  specially  espoused  by  Dr.  Arnold  in 
later  times.  According  to  this  theory  the  church  and 
state  are  really  identical,  the  church  being  merely 
the  state  in  its  educational  and  religious  aspect 
and  organisation.  But  Coleridge's  special  theory 
is  different  from  this,  although  allied  to  it.  He 
distinguishes  the  Christian  Church  as  such  from  any 
national  church.  The  former  is  spiritual  and  catholic, 
the  latter  institutional  and  local.  •  The  former  is 
opposed  to  the  '  world,'  the  latter  is  an  estate  of  the 
realm.  The  former  has  nothing  to  do  with  states 
and  kingdoms.  It  is  in  this  respect  identical  with  the 
'  spiritual  and  invisible  church  known  only  to  the 
Father  of  Spirits,'  and  the  compensating  counterpoise 
of  all  that  is  of  the  world.  It  is  in  short  the  Divine 
aggregate  of  what  is  really  divine  in  all  Christian 
communities  and  more  or  less  ideally  represented  '  in 
every  true  church.'  A  national  church  again  is  the 
incorporation  of  all  the  learning  and  knowledge — 
intellectual  and  spiritual — in  a  country.  Every 
nation,  in  order  to  its  true  health  and  civilisation, 
requires  not  only  a  land-owning  or  permanent  class 
along  with  a  commercial,  industrial,  and  progressive 
class,  but  moreover,  an  educative  class  to  represent 
,  all  higher  knowledge,  *  to  guard  the  treasures  of  past 
civilisation,'  to  bind  the  national  life  together  in  its 
past,  present,  and  future,  and  to  communicate  to  all 


Coleridge  and  Jtis  ScJiooI.  33 

citizens  a  clear  understanding  of  their  rights  and 
duties.  This  third  estate  of  the  realm  Coleridge 
denominated  the  '  Clerisy,'  and  included  not  merely 
the  clergy,  but,  in  his  own  language,  '  the  learned  of  all 
denominations.'  The  knowledge  which  it  was  their 
function  to  cultivate  and  diffuse,  embraced  not  only 
theology,  although  this  pre-eminently  as  the  head  of 
all  other  knowledge,  but  law,  music,  mathematics,  the 
physical  sciences,  '  all  the  so-called  liberal  arts  and 
sciences,  the  possession  and  cultivation  of  which 
constitute  the  civilisation  of  a  country.' 

This  is  at  any  rate  a  large  conception  of  a  national 
church.  It  is  put  forth  by  its  author  with  all  earnest- 
ness, although  he  admitted  that  it  had  never  been 
anywhere  realised.  But  it  was  his  object  '  to  present 
the  Idea  of  a  national  church  as  the  only  safe  criterion 
•by  which  we  can  judge  of  existing  things.'  It  is  only 
when  '  we  are  in  full  and  clear  possession  of  the 
ultimate  aim  of  an  institution  '  that  we  can  ascertain 
how  far  '  this  aim  has  even  been  attained  in  other 
ways.' 

These,  very  briefly  explained,  are  the  main  lines 
along  which  Coleridge  moved  the  national  mind  in 
the  third  decade  of  this  century.  They  may  seem  to 
some  rather  impalpable  lines,  and  hardly  calculated 
to  touch  the  general  mind.  But  they  were  influential, 
as  the  course  of  Christian  literature  has  since  proved. 
Like  his  own  genius,  they  were  diffusive  rather  than 
concentrative.  The  Coleridgian  ideas  permeated  the 
general  intellectual  atmosphere,  modifying  old  con- 
ceptions in  criticism  as  well  as  theology,  deepening 
if  not  always  clarifying  the  channels  of  thought  in 
many  directions,    but    especially    in    the    direction  of 

C 


34         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Christian  problems.  They  acted  in  this  way  as  a 
new  circulation  of  spiritual  air  all  round,  rather  than 
in  conveying  any  new  body  of  truth.  The  very 
ridicule  of  Carlyle  testifies  to  the  influence  which 
they  exercised  over  aspiring  and  younger  minds. 
The  very  emphasis  with  which  he  repudiates  the 
Coleridgian  metaphysic  probably  indicates  that  he 
had  felt  some  echo  of  it  in  his  own  heart. 

Of  the  more  immediate  disciples  of  Coleridge, 
there  are  only  two  that  claim  our  attention  here. 
Others,  such  as  Edward  Irving,  Maurice,  and 
Kingsley,  will  afterwards  come  under  notice  in  their 
special  places. 

Of  all  the  disciples  of  Coleridge,  Julius  Charles 
Hare  may  be  reckoned  the  most  direct  and  confessed. 
He  acknowledges  his  obligations  to  him  everywhere. 
'  Of  all  recent  English  writers,  the  one  whose  sanction 
I  have  chiefly  desired  is  the  great  religious  philo- 
sopher to  whom  the  mind  of  our  generation  in  Eng- 
land owes  more  than  to  any  other  man,  and  whose 
aim  it  was,'  he  says,  '  to  spiritualise  not  only  our 
philosophy  but  our  theology,  to  raise  them  both 
above  the  empiricism  into  which  they  had  fallen,  and 
to  set  them  free  from  the  technical  trammels  of  logical 
systems.'  It  was  in  1846  that  Hare  thus  wrote,*  and 
in  his  Life  of  John  Sterling,  published  two  years 
later,  he  was  equally  emphatic  in  his  admiration  and 
enthusiasm  for  the  '  great  Christian  philosopher,'  on 
Sterling's  account  as  well  as  his  own.  Sterling  was 
not  content,  he  tells,  to  be  a  reverent  student  of 
Coleridge's    writings,     but    '  when     an     opportunity 

'  Preface  to  Mission  of  the  Comforter. 


Coleridge  and  his  School.  35 

occurred,  he  sought  out  the  old  man  in  his  oracular 
shrine  at  Highgate,  and  often  saw  him  in  the  last 
years  of  his  life  ' — the  fact,  indeed,  to  which  we  owe 
the  rival  satiric  description  of  the  Highgate  Sage 
and  his  pupils  in  Carlyle's  better  known  life  of  the 
gifted  friend  of  both  these  men. 

To  what  extent  Hare  himself  had  any  personal 
intercourse  with  Coleridge  does  not  appear ;  but  we 
see  readily  the  influences  which  moved  him  towards 
the  same  line  of  thought.  Born  twenty-three 
years  after  Coleridge,  or  in  1795,  Hare  passed, 
after  a  brilliant  career  at  school,  to  Cambridge  in 
1812,  where  he  numbered  among  his  fellow-students 
such  men  as  Whewell  and  Thirlwall.  Here  it  was, 
at  his  '  entrance  into  intellectual  life,'  that  he  enjoyed, 
as  he  says,  the  singular  felicity,  along  with  his  com- 
peers, of  having  his  thoughts  stimulated  and  trained 
by  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  '  in  whom  practical 
judgment,  and  moral  dignity,  and  a  sacred  love  of 
truth,  were  so  nobly  wedded  to  the  highest  intel- 
lectual powers, '  ^  as  opposed  to  the  noxious  influence 
of  Byron,  v/ith  his  '  sentimental  and  self-ogling 
misanthropy.'  The  young  Cambridge  intellect  of 
that  day  delighted  to  look  to  these  pure  masters 
of  thought  and  song.  Coleridge,  indeed,  had  not 
yet  entered  on  his  theological  stage,  and  Words- 
worth fortunately  remained  a  poetic  teacher  all  his 
life ;  but  early  inclination  towards  the  Lake,  rather 
than  the  Byronic,  school  of  poetry,  naturally  led 
to  an  admiration  of  Coleridge's  later  writings. 
Hare  was  also,  along  with  his  English  master,  a 
diligent   student   of    German  philosophy.      He    had 

^  Mission  of  the  Comforter. 


36         Movements  of  Religums  TJiought. 

gone  while  quite  a  youth  to  Germany,  and  as, 
on  the  Wartburg,  he  saw  the  mark  of  Luther's  ink- 
stand on  the  castle  wall,  he  learned,  as  he  after- 
wards said,  'to  throw  inkstands  at  the  devil.' 
Again,  in  1832,  before  he  settled  on  his  living  at 
Hurstmonceaux,^  he  had  gone  abroad  and  made  the 
friendship  of  Bunsen,  and  otherwise  become  further 
acquainted,  not  only  with  German  philosophy,  but 
with  the  new  movement  in  German  theology  initiated 
by  Schleiermacher.  He  was  caught  and  greatly 
moved  by  all  these  fresh  influences,  and  naturally 
turned  to  Coleridge  as  the  chief  leader  in  the  fresh 
outburst  of  theological  thought  at  home. 

With  all  Hare's  noble  enthusiasm  and  captivating 
spirit  of  Christian  culture,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he 
is  much  of  a  leader  of  thought  himself  He  is 
critical,  didactic,  philosophic  in  tone,  always  cul- 
tured. He  writes  at  times  with  a  fine,  if  desultory, 
eloquence ;  and  his  books,  especially  the  Guesses  at 
Truth,  which  he  published  along  with  his  brother 
first  in  1828,  were  much  read,  and  felt  to  be  highly 
stimulating,  forty  years  ago.  I  can  never  forget  my 
own  obligation  to  some  of  them  ;  yet  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that  both  author  and  writings  are  now  some- 
what dim  in  the  retrospect.  They  have  not  lived  on, 
and  this  no  doubt  mainly  because  both  reflected  for 
the  greater  part  the  movement  of  his  time  rather 
than  added  any  new  and  creative  force  to  it.  It  was 
impossible  for  a  mind  so  critical  and  scholarly  as 
Hare's,  with  such  a  range    of  varied  and  interesting 

*  This  seems  the  proper  speUing  of  this  name  (See  Memorials  of  a 
Quiet  Life,  c.  ni.  p.  69),  but  it  is  often  spelt,  and  even  by  Julius 
Hare  himself,  Herstmonceux. 


Coleridge  and  Ids  School.  3  y 

knowledge,  one  of  the  best  classical  tutors  in  his 
day  at  Cambridge,  the  translator,  along  with  Thirl- 
wall,  of  Niebuhr's  History  of  Rome,  the  student  of 
Neander  and  Tholuck,  as  well  as  of  Schleiermacher 
and  Coleridge,  not  to  own  the  breath  of  new  life 
that  was  stirring  everywhere  the  mental  atmosphere 
around  him,  and  to  join  in  opening  up  new  channels 
for  it  in  which  to  circulate.  It  w^as  his  aim  and 
ambition  to  lead,  along  \\\\\\  his  master,  the  M-ay 
to  a  more  'spiritual  philosophy  and  theology;'  and 
he  has  beyond  doubt  helped  many  on  this  way.  But 
he  has  not  made  the  way  itself  much  clearer ;  and  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  his  purely  controversial 
writings,  such  as  his  Contest  ivith  Rome  against  Dr. 
Newman,  and  his  Vindication  of  LntJier  against  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  have  not  more  life  in  them  than 
his  more  special  contribution  to  thought.  His  un- 
doubted learning  and  great  fairness  of  temper,  with 
(it  must  be  admitted)  keen  severity  of  judgment  when 
his  spirit  was  roused,  gave  him  great  success  as  a 
controversialist ;  and  whatever  may  be  our  legitimate 
admiration  of  our  own  Scottish  philosopher,  I  do  not 
think  any  impartial  student  can  doubt  that  he  fared 
badly  indeed  at  the  hands  of  the  English  archdeacon 
in  his  treatment  of  the  great  German  Reformer. 
Here  he  met  for  once  his  own  match  in  learning, 
and  a  far  deeper  insight  than  his  own  into  the  mean- 
ing of  theological  terms  and  conceptions. 

In  one,  and  that  a  very  interesting  manner,  Julius 
Hare,  his  brothers,  and  kinsfolk,  have  been  recalled 
to  vivid  life  again  in  our  day.  The  Memorials  of  a 
Quiet  Life,  the  picture  of  devout  and  rational  piety 
there    presented    to    us,    has    touched   many   hearts 


38         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

notwithstanding  its  somewhat  tedious  and  minute 
detail.  Augustus  William  Hare,  the  joint  author 
with  his  brother  of  the  Guesses  at  Truth,  and  author 
of  the  well-known  Sermons  to  a  Country  Con- 
gregation (1837),  claims  a  niche  beside  his  brother 
as  a  helper  in  the  revival  of  a  more  direct  religious 
teaching.  A  more  devoted,  self-sacrificing,  and 
loving  Christian  minister,  never  lived ;  and  his 
Sermons  were  a  new  awakening  to  many  hearts. 
There  are  no  more  moving  glimpses  of  spiritual  life 
to  be  found  in  any  literature  than  those  which  he  and 
his  widow,  and  the  other  inmates  of  the  Rectory 
at  Hurstmonceaux,  present  to  a  congenial  reader. 
Whatever  may  be  our  estimate  of  the  force  of  thought 
which  emanated  from  this  source,  a  more  beautiful 
family  life — a  happier  combination  of  'beautiful  souls' 
— was  never  brought  together.  The  life  of  religion  was 
never  better  exemplified ;  and  in  these  days,  when 
the  veil  has  been  lifted  with  such  unhappy  results  on 
many  interiors,  it  is  well  to  be  able  to  point  to  what 
religion  may  do  for  the  most  thoughtful  and  deeply- 
pondering  minds,  when  its  benign  spirit  has  once 
possessed  them. 

Of  John  Sterling  a  few  words  must  suffice.  His 
name  cannot  be  omitted,  and  yet  we  cannot  dwell  on 
it,  nor  are  we  called  upon  to  do  so.  There  must  have 
been  an  infinite  attractiveness  in  the  man  to  have 
drawn  out  as  he  did  such  treasures  of  affection  from 
teachers  so  different  as  Hare  and  Maurice  on  the 
one  side  and  Carlyle  on  the  other.  Maurice  hardly 
ever  alludes  to  him  without  something  of  a  sob, 
as  if  he  might  have  done  more  for  him  than  he  did ; 


Colerids'e  and  his  School. 


^i> 


and  the  hardier  spirit  of  Carlyle  melts  into  tender- 
ness as  he  writes  of  him.  '  A  man  of  perfect  veracity,' 
he  says,  '  in  thought,  word,  and  deed.  Integrity 
towards  all  men,  nay,  integrity  had  refined  with 
him  into  chivalrous  generosity ;  there  was  no  guile  or 
baseness  anywhere  found  in  him.  A  more  perfectly 
transparent  soul  I  have  never  known.'  His  '  very 
faults  grew  beautiful'  Again,  '  I  was  struck  with 
the  kindly  but  restless  swift-glancing  eyes,  which 
looked  as  if  the  spirits  were  all  out  coursing  like  a 
pack  of  many  beagles  beating  every  bush.'  It  must 
have  been  a  loveable  character  which  drew  around 
him  so  much  love.  There  must  also  have  seemed  in 
Sterling  a  marvellous  potency  as  if,  with  due  maturity, 
he  might  have  done  great  things  in  literature  if  not 
in  theology.  But  the  brightness  of  his  promise  soon 
spent  itself  It  may  be  doubted  even  whether  if  he 
had  lived  he  would  have  achieved  much.  '  Over 
haste,'  says  Carlyle,  '  was  his  continual  fault.  Over 
haste  and  want  of  due  strength.'  His  genius  flashed 
and  coruscated  like  sheet-lightning  round  a  subject 
rather  than  went  to  the  heart  of  it.  He  lacked  depth 
and  the  capacity  of  continuous  thought.  He  was 
moved,  if  not  by  '  every  wind  of  doctrine,'  by  every 
breath  of  speculation  that  braced  his  intellectual  lungs 
for  a  time.  It  was  now  Coleridge,  and  now  Edward 
Irving,  and  now  Schleiermacher,  and  now  Carlyle  that 
swept  the  strings  of  his  mind  and  made  them  vibrate. 
We  have  already  seen  all  that  Coleridge  was  to  him. 
He  owed  to  him  '  education,' — even  *  himself  The 
Aids  to  Reflection  was  for  many  years  his  vade  mecum. 
Of  Schleiermacher  as  late  as  1836  he  says,  '  he  was  on 
the  whole  the  greatest  spiritual  teacher  I  have  fallen 


40        Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

in  with.'  And  at  last,  wnen  Carlyle's  teaching  had 
long  displaced  any  other,  he  doubted  whether  he  had 
ever  '  got  any  good  of  what  he  had  heard  or  read  of 
theology.'  From  his  bright  restless  intellect  all  the 
bequests  of  Christian  thinkers  that  once  seemed  to 
enrich  him  had  been  thrown  off,  and  he  went  without 
theological  help  '  into  the  great  darkness.'  And  yet 
not  without  help,  yea  with  better  help  than  any 
theological  reading  could  give  him,  if  the  story  told 
in  Hare's  life,  but  untold  by  Carlyle,  be  true.  '  As  it 
grew  dark  he  appeared  to  be  seeking  for  something, 
and  on  his  sister  asking  him  what  he  wanted,  he 
said,  "  only  the  old  Bible  which  I  used  so  often  at 
Hurstmonceaux  in  the  cottages."  ' 

Sterling  was  not  destined  to  be  any  force  of 
religious  thought  for  his  generation.  With  all  his 
'  sleepless  intellectual  vivacity,'  he  was  '  not  a  thinker 
at  all.'  The  words  are  Carlyle's  and  not  ours.  Yet 
he  deserves  to  be  remembered,  as  he  will  continue  to 
be  associated  with  the  great  Teacher  who  first  kindled 
both  his  intellectual  and  religious  enthusiasm, 
Carlyle  has  embalmed  his  name  and  discipleship  in 
beautiful  form,  and  the  picture  will  remain  while 
English  literature  lasts.  But  students  of  religious 
opinion  will  always  also  think  of  him  as  a  disciple  of 
Coleridge,  and  the  friend  of  Maurice  and  Hare. 


II. 

THE  EARLY  ORIEL  SCHOOL  AND  ITS 
CONGENERS. 

TN  1825,  the  same  year  in  which  the  Aids  to 
Reflection  saw  the  light,  appeared  Whately's 
Essays  On  Some  of  the  Peculiarities  of  the  Christian 
Religion.  Three  years  later,  or  in  1828,  appeared  a 
further  series  of  essays  by  the  same  writer  On  some 
of  the  Difficulties  in  the  Writings  of  St.  Paul.  But 
even  before  the  earliest  of  these  years  Whately  had 
been  Bampton  Lecturer,  and  published  in  the  usual 
manner  his  lectures  On  the  Use  and  Abuse  of  Party 
Feeling  ifi  Religion  (1822).^  In  the  third  decade  of 
the  century,  in  short,  Whately  was  something  of  a 
power  in  the  theological  world,  as  he  had  been  long 
a  power  at  Oxford.  Entered  at  Oriel  College  as 
early  as  1805  he  became  a  Fellow  in  181 1,  and 
finding  a  congenial  soil  there  in  such  minds  as 
Davison — still  somewhat  remembered  in  connection 
with  Discourses  on  Prophecy, — and  Copleston,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Llandaff,  he  may  be  said  to  have 
founded,  or  at  least  inspired  with  its  most  vigorous 
life  the  '  old  '  or  '  early  Oriel  School,'  which  made  a 
name  for   itself  before  Newman   and    his  immediate 

^  His   Historic  Doubts   respecting  Napoleon   Buonaparte — the    most 
popular  of  all  his  books — was  still  earlier,  1819. 

41 


42         MoveTnents  of  Religious  Thought. 

friends  joined  the  society.  Keble,  indeed,  was  a 
fellow  of  the  college  at  this  early  time,  but  it  was 
the  spirit  not  of  Keble  but  of  Whately  that  then 
ruled  the  place,  and  brought  it  fame.  Arnold  came 
as  a  youthful  scholar  from  Corpus  in  1 815,  and 
Hampden,  who  had  been  trained  at  Oriel  from  the 
first,  had  also  entered  it  as  a  fellow  the  year  before 
(1814). 

A  more  remarkable  combination  of  able  men  has 
seldom  been  brought  together.  In  addition  to  the 
names  already  mentioned,  that  of  Dr.  Hawkins 
deserves  to  be  signalised.  Already  significant  as  a 
man  of  ability  before  1825,'  he  succeeded  Copleston 
as  head  of  Oriel  in  1828,  and  survived  to  our  own 
time — a  venerable  figure,  whose  bright  eyes  and 
vivacious  expression,  bespeaking  the  sharp  and 
kindly  intelligence  within,  none  can  forget  who  ever 
came  in  contact  with  him.  Through  all  changes  he 
maintained  the  liberal  traditions  of  the  place,  even 
when  Newmanism  was  at  its  height.  His  writings 
are  now  forgotten,  but  his  personal  influence  was 
powerful  for  more  than  one  generation. 

It  was  Copleston,  however,  who  was  the  original 
master-mind  of  the  movement.  His  lectures  and 
converse  had  been  '  like  a  new  spring  of  life '  to 
Whately  on  his  entrance  to  the  College;  and  long 
afterwards  (1845),  Whately  wrote  to  him  from 
Dublin  : — "  From  you  I  have  derived  the  main  prin- 
ciples on  which  I  have  acted  and  speculated  through 

^  His  Dissertation  on  Unauthoritative  Tradition  appeared  as  early 
OS  1819.  Various  publications  followed,  especially,  in  1833,  Discourses 
tipon  some  of  the  principal  objects  and  uses  of  the  Historical  Scriptures 
of  the  Old  Testament. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     43 

life.' ^  Another  says  of  Copleston : — 'Under  a 
polished  and  somewhat  artificial  scholarlike  exterior, 
and  an  appearance  of  even  overstrained  caution,  there 
lurked  not  only  much  energy  of  mind  and  precision 
of  judgment,  but  a  strong  tendency  to  liberalism  in 
Church  and  State,  and  superiority  to  ordinary  fears 
and  prejudices.  It  was  in  this  direction  that  he 
especially  trained  Whately's  character;  '^  and  Whately 
in  his  turn  diffused  the  liberal  spirit  which  he  drank 
at  the  fountain-head.  The  new  Oriel  men  were  called 
'Noetic'  The  School  was  the  'Noetic  School;'^ 
and  they  seem  to  have  rejoiced  in  the  reputation  of 
superior  mental  penetration  and  independence. 
'Whether  they  were  preaching  from  the  University 
pulpit,  or  arguing  in  common  rooms,  or  issuing 
pamphlets,'  on  passing  occasions,  they  made  a  noise 
which  arrested  attention  and  filled  with  alarm  many 
of  the  older  University  minds,  who,  Mr.  Mozley  says, 
'felt  the  ground  shaking  under  them.'  'Whately 
especially  was  claimed  by  his  admirers  to  have  a 
spiritual  as  well  as  mental  pre-eminence,'  and  his 
presence  infused  terror  among  all  'who  wished  things 
to  remain  as  they  were  in  their  own  lifetime.' 

It  is  difficult  now  to  realise  the  commotion  once 
excited  in  the  English  theological  mind  by  Whately 
and  Arnold,  and  particularly  by  Hampden,  now 
so  little  known ;  but  the  alarm  which  they 
excited  was  very  genuine  at  the  time,  as  their 
influence  upon  the  course  of  theological  thought 
was  very   considerable.      It    is    necessary,    therefore, 

'  Memoir  of  Coplestoit,  p.  103. 

^Heraian  Merivale,  Whately's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  13. 

'Mozley's  Reminiscences,  vol.  i.  p.  18. 


44         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

that  we  should  review  this  influence  and  try  to 
estimate  it.  No  view  of  the  course  of  reHgious 
thought  in  our  century  which  omitted  these  names 
would  be  at  all  complete.  They  stand  together  also 
as  a  common  group  or  School  connected  with  Oriel 
College,  widely  separated  as  were  their  respective 
activities  in  life.  By  1820  Arnold  had  finally  left 
Oriel  and  his  work  as  a  fellow,  although  he  after- 
wards returned  to  Oxford  as  Professor  of  History 
(1841).  In  1 83 1  Whately  had  become  Arch- 
bishop of  Dublin,  and  left  Oxford  permanently, 
Hampden  alone  remained  in  a  succession  of  Uni- 
versity posts  till  1847,  when  he  became  Bishop  of 
Hereford.  An  intimate  correspondence,  however, 
continued  to  unite  the  friends.  It  was  Whately's 
ear  into  which  Hampden  poured  his  troubles 
when  they  arose  in  1836  on  his  appointment 
as  Professor  of  Divinity.  It  was  Arnold  who  came 
to  his  assistance  at  the  same  crisis  in  his  powerful 
article  in  the  Edinbiirgli  Reviciu,  in  the  same  year, 
on  'The  Oxford  Malignants.'  The  bonds  of  intel- 
lectual and  religious  fellowship,  therefore,  continued 
to  unite  them  long  after  Oriel  had  been  left  behind, 
and  a  new  sect,  so  to  speak,  had  become  identified 
with  it.  The  two  sects,  in  fact,  ran  closely  into  one 
another,  as  we  have  already  indicated.  Keble  was 
the  friend  of  Arnold,  for  whom  he  always  expressed 
a  warm  regard  ;  and  Whately  was  '  the  encouraging 
instructor'  of  Newman,  who,  according  to  the  Car- 
dinal's own  record,  opened  his  mind  and  taught  him 
to  '  use  his  reason.'  In  our  next  lecture  w^e 
shall  consider  the  band  of  Anglo-Catholics  in  the 
blaze  of  whose    movement   the  '  Noetic  '  School  dis- 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     45 

appeared.      But  to  the  members  of  this  School  we 
must  first  direct  attention. 

There  are  other  names  intimately  associated  with 
the  school  which  also  deserve  notice,  as  representative 
of  liberal  theological  opinion.  Chevalier  Bunsen 
appears  in  the  background,  intimately  connected  with 
the  critical  movement  of  the  time,  and  with  not  a  few 
of  the  men  in  England  engaged  in  it.  Blanco  White 
is  another  associate  of  significance.  Singularly  he 
was  an  inmate  of  Oriel  College  from  about  1826  to- 
1831.  He  then  followed  Whately  to  Dublin  and  lived 
in  his  house  till  the  stirrings  of  his  restless  mind  drove 
him  to  Liverpool  and  the  Unitarianism  in  which 
he  closed  his  strangely  revolving  career.  Blanco 
White  would  make  an  interesting  study  by  himself 
with  all  his  spiritual  vicissitudes  and  pathetic  ways. 
But  two  masters  of  spiritual  diagnosis,  Neander^  and 
Mr.  Gladstone,^  have  already  sketched  him,  and  we 
cannot  do  more  here  than  set  him  in  his  place  and 
draw  attention  to  him.  Influence  in  some  degree  he 
must  have  been,  for  he  was  the  most  sensitive  and 
radiating  of  mortals,  either  giving  or  receiving  light 
every  day  of  his  life.  But  curious  and  touching  as 
he  is  in  himself,  I  have  failed  to  trace  any  definite 
impulse  communicated  by  him  to  the  Oriel  School, 
or  even  to  the  religious  thought  of  his  time.  Like 
many  other  men  who  have  been  trained  in  close 
'systems  of  thought,  when  the  spirit  of  doubt  was 
awakened  in  him,  he  merely  fell  out  of  one  system 
into  another — Romanism,  Atheism,  Anglicanism, 
Unitarianism.  He  had  little  conception  of  true 
inquiry,  or  of  the  patience  of  thought  which  works 

'^Blanco  White,  Berlin,  1848.  "^  Gleaning:,,  vol.  ii. 


46         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

through  all  layers  of  systems   to  the    core    of   truth 
beneath. 

Two  names,  however,  deserve,  along  with  the  Oriel 
men  already  mentioned,  a  special  space  in  this  lec- 
ture— names  belonging  in  their  full  brilliancy  to  the 
later  history  of  the  Church  of  England — but  which 
emerged  into  prominence  in  the  days  of  Whately 
and  Arnold.  Already  before  1830  both  Milman 
and  Thirlwall  had  acquired  a  distinctive  reputation. 
They  had  entered  on  new  fields  of  critical  specula- 
tion in  regard  to  Scripture,  and  ruffled  even  to 
violence  the  surface  of  the  religious  world.  We 
must  therefore,  before  closing  our  present  lecture, 
glance  at  the  historian  of  the  Jews  and  the 
translator  of  Schleicrmacher's  Essay  on  the  Gospel 
of  St.  Luke, 

Richard  Whately  is  the  foremost  name  in  our  list. 
He  was  fifteen  years  younger  than  Coleridge,  and  eight 
years  older  than  Arnold.^  He  was  born,  so  to  speak, 
into  the  Church,  his  father  having  been  a  vicar,  and 
also  Prebendary  of  Bristol.  He  was  the  youngest 
child  of  a  large  clerical  family,  as  Coleridge  was,  and 
weak  and  somewhat  ailing  as  a  child — another  point 
of  coincidence  between  the  poet  and  logician.  In  all 
other  respects  no  two  men  could  be  conceived 
less  alike  in  youth  and  manhood,  although  very 
notably  in  both  cases  the  'youth'  was  the  father  of  the 
'man.'  The  boyhood  of  Coleridge  as  all  know  was 
given  to  poetry  and  metaphysics.  There  may  have 
been  as  youthful  poets — there  never  was  as  youthful 
a  metaphysician.      The    boyhood    of   Whately    was 

1  Whately  was  born  in  1787;  Arnold  in  1795;   Coleridge  in  1772. 


Early  OiHel  School  and  its  Congeners.     47 

given  to  arithmetic.  There  was  something  quite 
remarkable  in  his  calculating  faculty,  which  began  to 
show  itself  between  five  and  six.  He  could  do  the 
most  difficult  sums  in  his  head  before  he  knew  any- 
thing of  the  names  of  the  processes  by  which  he 
worked  them.  He  had  his  share  also  of  castle-building, 
in  the  metaphysical  line,  as  his  powers  matured; 
and  became  at  times  so  absorbed  in  self-reflection,  or 
in  mental  calculation,  'as  to  run  against  people  in 
the  street'  The  extraordinary  thing  is  that  all  his 
arithmetical  precocity  came  to  nothing.  His  powers 
of  calculation  entirely  left  him  as  he  grew  up.  '  The 
passion  wore  off,'  he  says ;  '  I  was  a  perfect  dunce 
at  cyphering,  and  so  have  continued  ever  since.'  He 
went  to  a  good  school  near  Bristol  at  nine  years  of 
age,  and  to  Oxford  when  he  was  eighteen.  He  early 
contracted  a  great  fondness  for  out-of-door  wander- 
ings, and  studies  in  natural  history,  which  never  left 
him.  '  Of  fishing  he  was  particularly  fond.'  Through- 
out life  he  retained  his  love  for  exercise  in  the  open 
air.  It  may  be  mentioned  also  that  he  retained 
through  life,  like  many  other  men  of  concentrated 
habits  of  thought,  the  absence  of  mind  which  charac- 
terised him  as  a  boy;  and  to  this  feature  in  some 
degree  is  no  doubt  to  be  attributed  such  strange  freaks 
as  those  with  his  climbing  dog,  in  which  he  after- 
wards indulged  even  when  a  don  at  Oxford,  to  the 
consternation  of  all  the  more  staid  orderly  behaved 
dons. 

He  very  early  developed  real  powers,  not  only  of 
scholarship  but  of  thought.  As  one  of  his  friends 
said  to  him,  '  From  the  beginning,  and  emphatically, 
Whately    was    a    thinker.       His    favourite     authors 


48         Movc)}ic)its  of  Rclioious  I  Junto  hi. 

were  few  —  Aristotle.  Tluicyditles,  Iiac«)n,  Jiishop 
l^iitler,  Warbui ton,  Adam  Smith.'  Here,  as  in  other 
thiriLjs,  unhke  Coleiidj^'e,  whose  reading  was  always 
of  an  omnivorous  character;  yet  stran^^ely  a  hke  im- 
putation of  plagiarism  was  maile  against  both — in 
the  case  of  Coleridge  obviously  because  he  forgi>t. 
in  the  plenitude  of  his  philosophical  reading,  what 
was  his  own  and  wiiat  was  others', — in  the  case  of 
Whatcly  because  he  was  often  falling  up(»n  thoughts 
wliich,  if  he  had  been  more  of  a  reader,  he  would  have 
known  that  others  had  produced  long  ago.  He  was 
an  Aristotelian  in  all  the  principles  and  methods  of 
his  philosophy,  and  to  no  man  was  the  adage  which 
he  quotes  in  one  of  his  early  volumes  more  con- 
temptible; '  Errare  malo  cum  Piatone  quam  cum 
istis  vera  sentirc.' 

In  theology,  as  in  other  things,  Whatcly  was  an 
active  and  fertile  thinker,  animated  by  an  insatiable 
love  of  finding  the  truth  and  plainly  stating  it.  In 
sheer    grasp    of    faculty — in    laying    hold    of    'some 

notion,'  which  he  considered  practically  important 

and  following  it  out  in  all  its  details, — beating  it  plain 

till  no  one  could  fail  to  see  it  as  he  himself  saw  it. 

he  was  unrivalled.  Clearness,  common  sense,  lionesty, 
and  strength  of  intellect  were  his  great  characteristics, 
and  it  is  in  virtue  of  these  rather  than  in  any  depth  or 
richness  of  new  and  living  thought  that  he  became 
a  power  first  at  Oxford  and  then  in  the  theological 
world.  Whereas  Coleridge  brought  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity  the  light  of  a  fresh  spiritual 
philosophy,  and  sought  some  synthesis  of  thought  by 
which  religion  in  its  highest  form  should  be  seen  not 
only  to  be  in  harmony  with  human  nature,  but  to  be 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     49 

its  only  perfect  flower  and  development,  its  true 
philosophy; — Whately — taking  the  prevailing  philo- 
sophy as  he  found  it, — brought  the  daylight  of 
ordinary  reason  and  of  historical  fact  to  play  upon  the 
accumulated  dogmas  of  traditionary'  religion,  and  to 
show  how  little  they  had,  in  many  cases,  to  say  for 
themselves.  He  was  a  subvertcr  of  prejudice  and 
commonplace — of  what  he  believed  to  be  religious  as 
well  as  irreligious  mistake,  more  than  an)thing  else. 
The  niaj<^rity  of  jxople  seemed  to  him, — xs  probably  is 
always  more  or  less  tiie  case, — to  live  in  an  atmosphere 
of  theological  delusion,  mistaking  their  own  conceits 
for  essential  religious  principles, — making  the  New 
Testament  writers  responsible  for  notions  that,  to  a 
just  anil  intelligent  criticism,  had  no  existence  there, 
and  were  indeed  contrary  to  its  spirit  and  teaching 
rightly  interpreted.  A  whole  cluster  of  beliefs  came 
in  this  way  under  his  destroying  hand :  for  ex- 
ample, the  belief  of  any  priesthood  under  the  Gospel 
.  ther  than  the  common  priesthood  of  Christians 
alike ;  the  belief  of  verbal  inspiration ;  and  again, 
of  the  Fourth  Commandment  as  being  the  obliga- 
tory* rule  for  the  Christian  Sunday.  So  also  the 
common  evangelical  doctrines  of  Election,  of  Per- 
severance, of  Assurance,  and  of  Imputation,  all  drew 
upon  them  his  incisive  pen.  He  did  not  maintain 
that  there  were  not  truths  in  Scripture  answering  to 
these  doctrines ;  but  the  great  aim  of  his  volume 
On  the  Difficultus  of  St.  Paul's  unritings  uas  to  show 
that  the  conmion  evangelical  ideas  on  these  subjects 
were  not  Pauline.  St.  Paul's  notion  of  election,  he 
maintained,  was  entirely  different  from  the  common 
dogma  which,  in  his  view,  virtually  makes  salvation 

D 


50        Movements  of  Religious  Thought, 

and  election  identical.  Analysing  at  length  the  use 
of  the  Pauline  word,  he  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  to  be  interpreted  always  in  a  general  sense  of  the 
body  of  the  Church,  '  even  as  the  whole  nation  of 
Israel  was  of  old  the  chosen.'  It  has  no  relation  to 
the  final  destiny  of  individuals.  When  '  the  Apostles 
address  these  converts  universally  as  the  "  elect "  or 
"  chosen  "  of  God,  this  must  be  understood  of  their 
being  chosen  out  of  the  whole  mass  of  the  Gentiles  to 
certain  peculiar  privileges.'  But  the  result  in  each 
case  depends  upon  the  use  of  the  privileges.  'We 
are  in  his  hands,'  says  the  Predestinarian,  '  as  clay  in 
the  potter's  who  hath  power  of  the  same  lump  to  make 
one  vessel  to  honour  and  another  to  dishonour  ; '  but 
this  very  passage,  he  argues,  so  far  from  favouring  the 
predestinarian  doctrine  makes  against  it,  *  since  the 
potter  never  makes  any  vessel  for  the  express  purpose 
of  being  broken  and  destroyed.'  On  the  contrary, 
the  meaning  of  the  statement  is  that  he  makes  '  some 
to  nobler  and  some  to  meaner  uses :  but  all  for  some 
use,  not  with  a  design  that  it  should  be  cast  away  and 
dashed  to  pieces.'  Even  so,  '  The  Almighty,  of  his 
own  arbitrary  choice,  causes  some  to  be  born  to  wealth 
or  rank,  others  to  poverty  or  obscurity,  some  in  a 
heathen  and  others  in  a  Christian  country ;  the  ad- 
vantages and  privileges  are  various,  and  so  far  as  we 
can  see  arbitrarily  dispensed.  But  the  final  rewards 
or  punishments  depend,  as  we  are  plainly  taught,  on 
the  use  or  abuse  of  those  advantages.' 

It  would  be  interesting,  if  we  had  time,  to  com- 
pare Coleridge's  and  Whately's  modes  of  treating 
this  mysterious  doctrine — the  more  inward,  spiritual 
experiential    treatment  of  the  one, — the  critical   and 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     5 1 

historical  treatment  of  the  other.  No  handHng  could 
well  be  more  different  in  the  two  cases,  and  yet 
there  is  an  affinity  between  them  in  end,  if  not  in 
means.  Both  are  alike  opposed  to  the  hyper-lo<jical 
forms  under  which  the  doctrine  has  been  chiefly 
transmitted  to  us.  It  was  the  aim  of  both,  in  this 
and  other  matters,  to  '  free  theology  from  its  logical 
trammels,'  to  bring  it  in  the  one  case  to  the  test 
of  spiritual  experience,  in  the  other  to  the  test  of 
historical  criticism. 

Logician  as  Whately  was,  no  man  more  strongly 
repudiated  the  application  of  logical  forms  to  Scrip- 
tural truth.  One  of  the  chief  hurts  of  religion  in  his 
opinion  had  arisen  from  this  very  cause,  and  the  conse- 
quent multiplication  of  '  foolish  and  unlearned  ques- 
tions'  in  the  theological  world.  Questions  however 
'  interesting  and  sublime,'  which  plainly  '  surpass  the 
limits  of  our  faculties,'  should  be  left  alone.  There  was 
in  him  as  in  Coleridge  a  strong  vein  of  Christian  agnos- 
ticism. All  such  questions  gender  strife  and  hopeless 
controversy,  for  how  can  men  agree  in  bold  theories 
respecting  points  on  which  they  can  have  no  correct 
knowledge,  which  are  in  fact  unintelligible  to  them  ? 
To  this  cause  he  attributes  the  heresies  on  the  subject 
of  the  Trinity  in  the  early  Church,  and  especially 
denounces  certain  rash  attempts  made  in  his  own 
day, — by  Hervey,  for  example,  the  once  well-known 
author  of  Meditations  among  the  Tombs, — '  to  ex- 
plain on  the  abstract  principle  of  justice  '  the  counsels 
of  the  Most  High,  on  the  equally  incomprehensible 
mystery  of  the  Atonement.^ 

We  might  give  many  illustrations  of  Whately's 
1  Bampton  Lectures  (1822),  p.  179. 


52         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

mode  of  theological  thought.  It  must  suffice  to 
emphasise  its  general  character.  W'hately  was  un- 
doubtedly for  his  day  a  strong  man,  who  believed 
that  he  had  a  reforming  mission  to  accomplish  in 
the  Church, — to  make  men  think  more  simply  and 
sincerely  about  religion, — to  teach  them  to  look  at 
Scripture  with  their  own  eyes, — and  to  destroy,  as  he 
conceived,  grave  errors  both  on  the  side  of  Puritanism 
and  of  Sacerdotalism.  He  had  no  fear  of  any  man  or 
of  any  party.  The  very  limits  of  his  theological  as  of 
his  philosophical  reading  gave  an  intensity  to  his  own 
principles,  and  a  confidence  in  ventilating  them,  which 
a  larger  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  theology,  and 
of  human  nature  in  connection  therewith,  would  pro- 
bably have  abated.  Certain  it  is  that  the  special  forms 
of  opinion  against  which  he  strove  were  not  killed  in 
his  day,  and  that  some  of  them  are  as  vigorous  as  ever. 
But  this  does  not  detract  from  the  real  force  that  he 
was,  nor  from  the  respect  that  is  due  to  his  constant 
courage  and  love  of  the  truth.  No  man  ever  lo\ed 
truth  more,  or  more  boldly  followed  it  as  he  found  it. 
No  one  more  fully  acted  on  his  own  principle  that 
*  fairness  and  candour '  are  the  best  allies  of  truth,  and 
that  religion  can  never  suffer  from  any  theor}'  on  any 
subject  that  is  really  well  founded  and  sound.'  He 
loved  with  all  his  heart  what  he  held  to  be  the  verities 
of  religion,  and  defended  them  with  all  his  might ; 
but  he  hated  superstition  in  every  form.  The  excesses 
of  Anglo-Catholic  Theology  and  of  German  Ration- 
alism were  alike  obnoxious  to  him.  He  closed 
equally  with  Newman  and  Strauss,  and  beat  them 
with  the  pitiless  and  persistent  force  o^  his  argument 

^  Essays  (1823),  p.  27. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     53 

and  ridicule.'  One  reason,  no  doubt,  of  the  compara- 
tive neglect  which  has  osertaken  his  works  is  that 
they  had  all  in  this  way  a  more  or  less  immediate 
and  temporary  purpose.  They  were  called  forth  by 
the  exigencies  of  circumstance  or  opinion  in  which 
liis  life  was  passed.  Many  of  them,  moreover,  are 
neither  more  nor  less  than  tracts,  such  as  his  once 
well-known  and  highly  popular  Cautions  for  the 
Times.  And  no  such  writings,  however  lively,  sugges- 
tive, and  successful  for  the  moment,  have  any  future 
life  before  them.  They  perish  in  their  use,  and  a 
second  generation  cannot  find  any  interest  in  what 
may  have  even  violently  agitated  or  amused  their 
predecessors. 

Dr.  Arnold  was  VVhately's  great  friend  and  frequent 
correspondent.  The  old  days  at  Oriel,  from  1815  to 
1820,  had  bound  them  closely  together,  and  the  bond 
was  only  severed  by  Arnold's  sudden  death  in  1842. 
To  Arnold  as  to  Newman,  in  their  first  Oriel  con- 
nection, Whately  had  been  something  of  a  master. 
?>en  after  both  had  left  Oriel,'  Arnold  tells  us  that  a 
visit  to  Whately  was  '  a  marked  era  in  the  formation 
of  his  opinions.'  Again,  in  the  preface  to  his  first 
volume  of  sermons,  published  in  1828,  Arnold  ex- 
presses his  special  obligation  to  the  author  of  the 
Essays  on  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  and  his  apprehen- 
sion that  some  of  his  sentences  were  so  like  passages 
in  the  Essays  that  he  might  be  accused  of  plagiarism. 
The  truth  was  that  his  own  views,  while  excogitated 
independently  and  before  he  had  seen  Dr.  Whately's 

'  See  his  Cautions  for  thg  Times,  as  well  as  his  Historic  Doubts. 
*  In  1822,   when  Whately  was  temporarily  resident  at   Halesworth, 
in  Suffolk,  a  living  to  which  he  had  been  presented  hy  his  uncle. 


54         Move7ne7its  of  Religious  Thought. 

volume,  had  yet  been  greatly  helped,  'confirmed, 
and  extended,'  by  communication  with  his  friend. 
When  Whately  was  promoted  to  the  Archbishopric 
of  Dublin  three  years  later,  Arnold  bears  the  warmest 
testimony  to  his  fitness  for  that  high  office.  He  is 
'  a  man  so  good  and  so  great  that  no  folly  or  wicked- 
ness will  move  him  from  his  purpose,'  and  '  in  point 
of  real  essential  holiness  there  does  not  live  a  truer 
Christian  than  Whately.' 

In  this  and  other  inward  qualities  most  people 
would  probably  now-a-days  reckon  Arnold  as  the 
superior.  The  head-master  of  Rugby  was  certainly 
a  good  and  holy  man,  if  ever  man  was.  We  may 
dispute  his  breadth  and  calmness  of  temper,  his 
knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  the  history  of  human 
thought  and  character, — historian  as  he  was  ;  we  may 
even  doubt  the  results  of  his  teaching  (they  could 
hardly  fail,  in  some  respects,  to  have  been  deeply 
disappointing  to  himself  if  he  had  lived) ;  but  we 
cannot  doubt  the  deep  devotion  and  piety  of  his 
nature.  There  have  been  few  more  thoroughly 
Christian  minds  in  our  century,  and  it  gives  one  a 
shock  like  a  personal  wound  when  we  read  a  state- 
ment of  Newman's,  made  in  the  fit  of  petulant  zeal 
that  seized  him  when  abroad,  before  his  mission  at 
Oxford  began.  Some  one,  he  tells  us,  said  in  his 
hearing  that  a  certain  interpretation  of  Scripture 
must  be  Christian  '  because  Dr.  Arnold  took  it' 
He  interposed,  '  But  is  lie  a  Christian  ?  '  Arnold 
had  his  doubts  in  his  youth  ;  he  was  never  all  his 
life  a  Christian  after  the  pattern  of  Dr.  Newman  and 
his  school ;  but  we  can  hardly  think  of  a  mind  in 
recent  times — unless  it   be   Maurice's — more  habitu- 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     5  5 

ally  under  the  influence  of  the  Divine  than  that  of 
Arnold.  From  the  time  that  he  took  orders  and 
settled  at  Laleham  (1819-28),  there  was  with  him  'a 
deep  consciousness  of  the  invisible  world.'  All  his 
being  was  interpenetrated  with  religion.  All  the 
acts  of  his  life  were  coloured  by  it.^  '  No  one  could 
know  him  even  a  little,'  said  a  friend,  *  and  not  be 
struck  by  his  absolute  wrestling  with  evil,  and,  with 
the  feeling  of  God's  help  on  his  side,  scorning  as  well 
as  hating  it.'  As  he  strove  with  evil,  so  he  loved 
Christ,  and  clung  to  Him  as  the  one  supreme  Object 
of  thought,  imagination,  and  affection.  He  was 
Christian  to  the  core,  and  it  was  the  very  ardency  of 
his  Christian  interest  that  kindled  his  fierceness  alike 
against  '  Oxford  malignancy '  and  school-boy  dis- 
honour. He  could  not  bear  that  men  should  profess 
the  Christian  faith  and  yet  act,  whether  for  a  party 
purpose  or  school-boy  gratification,  in  the  face  of 
Christian  principle  and  precept. 

It  was  the  same  evident  devotion  to  religion  and  its 
verities,  as  he  felt  them,  that  gave  his  liberal  opinions 
so  much  weight.  Men  in  general  felt,  when  they 
heard  of  his  free  thoughts  about  Scripture  and  the 
Church,  that  here  at  least  was  the  speech  of  a  man 
who  did  not  undervalue  any  religious  obligation.  It 
was  known  to  be  the  aim  of  his  life  to  make  a  public 
school  Christian,  and  a  more  self-denying  or  devoted 
task  could  hardly  be  imagined  than  this.  Whatever 
he  wrote  or  said,  there  were  those,  and  they  were  an 
increasing  number,  who  said  that  it  was  a  genuine 
religious  impulse,  and  nothing  else,  that  inspired  him. 

If  wc  ask  more  particularly  what  were  the  elements 

^  See  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  30  et  seq. 


56         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  Arnold's  power  in  quickening  religious  thought, 
the  answer  must  be  first  of  all  that  he  too  vitalised 
as  Coleridge  did  the  Christian  conceptions  of  his 
time.  He  did  so,  not  by  carrying  them  as  the  former 
did  into  a  higher  region  of  thought,  or  fitting  them 
anew  to  the  inner  constitution  of  humanity,  but  in 
an  equally  real  and  important  manner  by  showing 
how  Christian  ideas  extend  into  every  aspect  of 
conduct  and  duty,  transfusing  and  elevating  the 
whole  round  of  life.  This  was  the  key-note  of  his 
first  volume  of  sermons,^  and  it  was  more  or  less 
the  key-note  of  all.  Arnold's  studies  and  tastes, 
much  as  he  prized  Coleridge,  did  not  lead  him 
towards  the  Coleridgian  metaphysics.  His  views 
were  objective  and  practical.  Christianity,  whether 
or  not  complete  as  a  philosophy,  was  to  him  plainly 
perfect  as  an  ethic  or  discipline.  It  took  up  the 
whole  man,  and  there  was  no  part  of  life  beyond  its 
inspiration  and  control.  It  was  no  affair  of  sects, 
or  mere  rule  of  the  '  religious  life '  specially  so 
called.  All  idea  of  isolating  religion  and  keeping 
it  select, — the  employment,  whether  of  evangelical 
or  of  Anglo-Catholic  votary — was  hateful  to  him.  It 
was  a  life-blood  permeating  all  human  activity — 
school,  college,  politics,  literature, — no  less  than  what 
is  commonly  meant  by  the  Church.  So  it  was  when 
he  went  into  the  pulpit;  he  did  not  put  on  any  clerical 
tone  or  separate  himself  from  his  other  occupations 
as  scholar,  historian,  inquirer.  He  was  himself  there 
as  everywhere  else,  and  sought  to  speak  in  simple 
unconventional  words,  as  he  would  '  in  real  life,'  in 

1  Published  in    1828.     The  last  edition  was  issued  by  his  daughter, 
Mrs.  Forster,  in  1878. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     5  7 

serious  conversation  with  a  friend,  or  with  those  who 
asked  his  advice. 

There  was  of  course  nothing  absokitely  new  in 
this  way  of  conceiving  and  applying  Christianity, 
no  more  than  there  was  anything  original  in 
Coleridge's  reaHstic  philosophy.  It  had  been  a 
commonplace  from  the  beginning  that  Christianity 
was  a  '  religion  of  common  life.'  But  not  less  certainly 
had  it  become  in  many  quarters  an  esoteric  or  sec- 
tarian rather  than  a  common  religion;  a  religion  of 
the  cathedral  or  the  conventicle ;  of  *  the  fathers  '  or 
'  reformers  ; '  of  the  evangelical  tea-circle  or  the  Anglo- 
Catholic  coterie.  It  bore  a  note  of  segregation  and 
exclusion  in  many  forms,  and  spoke  in  artificial  and 
'  pious  '  phraseology.  It  required,  therefore,  if  not  origi- 
nality, yet  something  of  vital  force  to  bring  it  back  to 
its  primitive  energy  as  not  only  'the  light  of  all  our 
seeing,'  but  the  inspiration  of  all  our  doing.  Arnold 
and  Augustus  William  Hare  did  more  by  their  ser- 
mons to  break  down  the  old  technicalities  of  the 
pulpit,  and  to  spread  a  homely  vital  '  common  interest 
in  Christian  truths  '  than  any  other  preachers  of  their 
time.  Men  were  made  to  feel  in  all  ranks  how  much 
religion  concerned  them, — how  closely  it  had  to  do 
with  their  everyday  work, — and  was  designed  to  be  the 
very  breath  of  their  being  not  merely  on  Sunday, — 
or  at  service  and  sacrament, — but  in  every  form  and 
expression  of  public  and  private  activity. 

It  was  this  vital  and  broad  grasp  of  Christian  truth 
that  lay  at  the  root  of  Arnold's  well-known  idea  of 
the  Church  as  only  another  name  for  the  State  in  its 
perfect  development.  This  seems  now  an  astounding 
proposition,  fitted  to  take  the  breath  away  from  some 


58         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

accepted  public  teachers.  But,  as  we  saw  in  our  last 
lecture,  large  ideas  of  the  Church  had  a  charm  for  the 
highest  intelligence  of  the  opening  century.  The 
reign  of  sectarian  commonplace  had  not  yet  begun, 
and  thoughts  which  the  genius  of  Hooker  and  of 
Burke  has  consecrated  by  their  exposition  were 
still  deemed  worthy  of  discussion.  Neither  these 
thinkers  nor  Arnold  of  course  sought  to  identify  the 
activities  of  the  Church  and  the  State.  They  knew 
very  well  that  these  were  two  bodies  with  distinct 
spheres  of  action.  They  knew  also  well  that,  as 
things  are,  they  cannot  be  identical.  What  they 
meant  was  that  the  ideal  of  each  of  these  bodies 
merges  in  that  of  the  other.  The  State  can  only 
attain  its  true  object,  the  highest  welfare  of  man, 
when  it  acts  '  with  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the 
Church.'  The  Church  can  only  attain  the  same  ob- 
ject when  '  invested  with  the  sovereign  power  of  the 
State.'  On  the  one  hand  Arnold  repudiated  strongly 
the  merely  secular  view  of  the  State  *  as  providing 
only  for  physical  ends ; '  on  the  other  hand  he  hated 
if  possible  still  more  what  he  regarded  as  an  anti- 
Christian  view  of  the  Church,  that  it  should  be 
'  ruled  by  a  divinely  appointed  succession  of  priests 
or  governors,'  rather  than  '  by  national  laws.'  The 
national  commonwealth  as  represented  by  Parlia- 
ment— which  in  this  connection  is  the  bete  noire  of 
modern  ritualist  and  dissenter  alike — was  to  him  the 
fit  sphere  for  the  realisation  of  Christianity. 

In  speaking  of  the  Church  as  clothed  with  the 
powers  of  the  State  Arnold  did  not  of  course  mean, 
as  Anglican  and  Puritan  had  both  meant  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  that  the  Church  should  enforce 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     59 

legal  penalties,  or  enact  by  its  authority  any  uniform 
plan  of  church-government  and  discipline.     This  was 
quite  inconsistent  with  his  whole  mode  of  thought, 
and  with  his  special  ideal  of  the  Church.     He  would 
have  the  Church  'a  sovereign  society,'  not  as  exercis- 
ing   separate   powers,  but   because    its    powers  were 
merged  in  those  of  a  Christian  State,  all  the  public 
officers  of  which  should  feel    themselves    to   be  also 
'  necessarily  officers  of  the  Church.'     So  it  seemed  to 
him  that  the  superstitious  distinction  between  clergy 
and  laity  would  vanish,  and  so  also  their  consequent 
jealousy  of  one  another — their  spheres  being  in  fact  the 
same,  nothing  being  'too  secular  to  claim  exemption 
from  the  enforcement  of  Christian  duty,  nothing  too 
spiritual  to  claim  exemption  from  the  control  of  the 
government   of  a  Christian  State.'      Then,  as  Dean 
Stanley    explains    his    position,    '  the    whole    nation, 
amidst  much  variety  of  form,  ceremonial,  and  opinion, 
would  at  last  feel  that  the  great  ends  of  Christian  and 
national    society   now    for   the    first  time  realised   to 
their  view  were  a  far  stronger  bond  of  union  between 
Christians,  and  a  far  deeper  division  from  those  who 
were  not  Christians,  than  any  subordinate   principle 
either  of  agreement  or  separation.' 

With  such  general  views  of  the  Church  it  may  be 
imagined  that  Arnold's  ecclesiastical  outlook  was  by 
no  means  a  happy  one  in  the  disturbed  years  that 
followed  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill.  On  the  one 
hand  he  saw,  as  the  liberal  politicians  of  the  day  did, 
the  urgency  of  Church  reform.  It  did  not  appear  to 
him  that  the  Anglican  establishment  could  live  unless 
greatly  modified,  so  as  to  make  an  open  door  for 
dissenters  ;  on  the  other   hand,  he  prized  the  Church 


6o         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  England  as  one  of  the  most  precious  institutions 
of  the  country  ;  and  nowhere  is  there  a  more  eloquent 
defence  of  the  blessings  of  a  parochial  ministry  than 
in  the  pamphlet  which  he  published  at  that  time. 
None  of  his  writings  made  more  noise,  or  gave  more 
offence,  than  the  Priiiciples  of  Church  Reform.  It 
offended  equally  churchmen  and  dissenters.  Its 
hititudinarianism  was  obnoxious  to  the  one;  its 
defence  of  an  Established  Church,  and  its  assaults 
upon  sectarianism,  obnoxious  to  the  other.  Its 
advocacy  of  large  and  liberal  changes  repelled  the 
Conservatives ;  its  severe  religious  tone  displeased 
the  Liberals.  One  proposal  which  it  contained 
raised  a  special  outcry,  namely,  that  the  parish 
churches  should  be  open  to  different  forms  of  wor- 
ship at  different  hours,  with  a  view  to  the  compre- 
hension of  the  dissenters.  The  plan  has  been  long 
acted  upon  on  the  Continent ;  but  to  the  average 
English  Churchman  there  is  something  peculiarly 
exasperating  in  this  suggestion.  It  stirs  his  wildest 
feelings  as  well  as  his  most  foolish  prejudices.  And 
the  storm  which  descended  on  Arnold  for  this  and 
other  suggestions  was  of  the  most  violent  kind.  It 
even  penetrated  Rugby,  and  for  a  time  painfully 
interfered  with  the  serenity  of  his  school  work. 

Yet,  as  it  has  been  remarked,  not  a  few  of  the 
changes  which  Arnold  then  advocated  for  the  in- 
creased efficiency  of  the  Church  of  England  have 
been  since  carried  out  with  advantage ;  such  chancres 
as  the  multiplication  of  bishoprics,  the  creation  of 
subordinate  or  suffragan  bishops,  the  revival  of  an 
inferior  order  of  ministers  or  deacons,  the  use  of 
churches  on  week-days,'  and  a  more  simole  order  of 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     6i 

service  than  is  enjoined  at  morning  and  evening 
prayer.  So  it  is  for  the  most  part.  The  abuse  of  the 
reformer,  as  well  as  the  blood  of  the  martyr,  becomes 
the  seed  of  the  Church,  and  when  the  evil  day  is  past 
the  good  seed  springs  up  to  life. 

But  we  have  still  to  notice  the  chief  service  of 
Arnold  to  the  Christian  intelligence  of  his  time.  He 
was  not  only  a  profoundly  Christian  man,  breathing 
the  vital  atmosphere  of  Christian  truth  in  all  his 
teaching;  nor  was  he  only  a  church  reformer;  but 
he  was  perhaps  more  eminently  a  critical  and 
historical  student  of  Scripture.  Here,  too,  he  fol- 
lowed the  wake  of  Coleridge  after  his  own  way. 
He  did  not  borrow  from  this  great  teacher.  There 
is  hardly  any  evidence  of  Coleridge's  direct  in- 
fluence upon  him ;  and  the  Confessions  of  an  In- 
quiring Spirit  were  not  made  public  till  1840.  But 
his  own  tastes  and  studies  led  him  independently  in 
the  same  direction.  He  was  from  the  first  an  earnest 
student  of  Niebuhr's  great  History  of  Rome,  and 
delighted  in  its  critical  method.  He  learned  German, 
so  as  to  be  able  to  read  it  in  the  original.  He  cor- 
responded both  with  Bunsen  and  Julius  Hare  as  to 
its  merits.  He  made,  moreover,  Bunsen's  personal 
acquaintance  in  1827,  and  derived  much  stimulus 
from  him  in  this  and  other  respects.  Yet  withal 
Arnold  remained,  as  did  also  Whately,  and  their 
common  friend  Hampden,  entirely  English  in  their 
spirit  of  theological  inquiry  ;  and  of  German  theology 
as  a  whole  Arnold  seems  to  have  known  almost 
nothing.  So  far  he  is  different,  not  only  from 
his  friend  Hare  and  Hare's  collaborator  Thirlwall, 
but  also  from  Milman,  as  we  shall  see,  who  were  well 


62         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

versed  in  German  theological  research.  If  ever, 
indeed,  there  was  a  mind  intensely  English  in  the 
practical  ethical  bent  underlying  all  his  studies  and 
all  his  work,  it  was  Arnold's. 

His  powers  as  an  interpreter  of  Scripture  therefore 
sprang  from  his  own  native  instincts  of  inquiry  and 
the  clear  moral  sense  which  made  him  hate  confusion 
of  thought  in  all  directions.  He  saw  that  the  whole 
method  of  scriptural  interpretation,  as  represented 
by  the  Evangelical  and  High  Church  Schools  alike, 
was  untenable.  Scripture  was  made  to  mean  any- 
thing, according  to  the  preconceptions  of  each.  Par- 
ticularly, it  may  be  said,  he  had  no  respect  for 
patristic  interpretation.  The  whole  patristic  super- 
stition which  once  more  rose  to  prominence  in  his  day 
was  strongly  repelled  by  him.  He  recognised  no 
special  intelligence  in  the  Ante-Nicene  Church,  still 
less  in  the  Church  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries. 
The  interpretation  of  prophecy  more  than  other  parts 
of  Scripture  appeared  to  him  a  chaos,  and  to  this, 
therefore,  he  devoted  his  main  attention.  His  two 
sermons,  with  preface  and  notes,  on  this  subject, 
published  in  1841,  remain  the  most  complete  and 
systematic  of  any  of  his  fragments  on  Exegetical 
Theology,  Ten  years  before,  he  had  drawn  attention 
to  the  general  subject  in  an  essay  affixed  to  his 
second  volume  of  sermons.  Then  he  was  in  the 
more  aggressive  mood  that  characterised  his  earlier 
years,  and  expressed  himself  so  as  to  excite  violent 
commotion  in  various  quarters.  In  point  of  fact, 
there  was  nothing  alarming  in  Arnold's  essay  '  on  the 
Right  Interpretation  of  the  Scripture.'  The  only  ex- 
ception to  it  that  would  be-  taken  to  it  now-a-days,  as 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Co7igeners.     63 

to  certain  recent  interpretations  of  *  Ruling  Ideas  of 
Early  Ages '  ^  in  connection  with  the  Old  Testament, 
is  that  it  does  not  grasp  all  the  difficulties  of  the 
subject  or  set  them  in  the  full  light  of  the  his- 
torical method.  It  deals  too  much  in  ingenious 
explanation. 

Arnold's  principle  and  method  of  interpretation 
are  both  in  the  right  direction.  He  recognised  clearly 
that  Scripture  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  Koran 
or  infallible  code  composed  at  one  time,  but  as  a 
literature  of  many  fragments  and  times,  and  of  divers 
authority.  Its  commands  and  teaching  alike  are  to 
be  judged  according  to  the  occasion  and  circum- 
stances in  which  they  were  given.  In  other  words, 
they  are  to  be  interpreted  not  absolutely  but  relatively. 
The  Bible,  as  to  its  text,  structure,  the  authorship 
of  its  several  parts,  and  its  literary  and  didactic  form, 
is  to  be  read  and  understood  like  all  other  ancient 
literature;  and  if  this  may  seem  to  render  Scriptural 
interpretation  a  difficult  and  somewhat  hopeless 
task,  save  for  the  scholarly  and  trained  intelligence, 
the  difficulty  is  no  more  than  is  to  be  found  elsewhere. 
We  cannot  fully  understand  any  ancient  writings 
except  in  this  manner.  And  the  Bible  has  this 
advantage  over  all  ancient  writings,  that  while  it  can 
only  be  interpreted  by  the  same  processes,  and  is 
liable  to  similar  uncertainties,  there  is  more  than 
enough  in  its  pages  for  practical  guidance  to  the 
simplest  reader.  In  this  sense,  and  in  no  other,  is  it 
true  that  '  he  that  runneth  may  read '  and  profit  by  it. 

In  short,  the  divine  side  of  Scripture,  the  side  on 

*  Ruling  Ideas  of  Early  Ages  and  their  relation  to  Old  Testament 
Faith,  by  J.  B.  Mozley,  D.D.,  late  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Oxford. 


64         Movements  of  Religioits  TJiought. 

which  it  appeals  to  our  spiritual  life  and  finds  us,  as 
Coleridge  said — is  legible  by  every  devout  reader. 
But  the  human  or  literary  side  of  it  presents  every- 
where  difficulties  of  a  similar  character  to  those 
found  in  all  literature  of  the  remote  past.  These 
difficulties  must  hi  faced  in  the  same  manner  and 
by  the  very  same  processes  as  we  must  face  similar 
difficulties  in  the  works  of  Plato  or  Aristotle.  It 
proves  nothing  against  the  truth  to  be  found  in  these 
writings,  that  scholiasts  and  commentators  have  given 
very  different  versions  of  parts  of  them  or  of  the  prin- 
ciples they  are  supposed  to  teach.  Nor  is  the  per- 
plexity of  commentators,  in  the  case  of  the  Bible  or 
any  other  writing,  a  necessary  index  of  the  obscurity 
of  the  writers.  Misreading  of  Scripture,  no  less  than 
misreading  of  Plato,  may  come,  and  in  point  of  fact 
does  come,  more  frequently  from  reading  into  them 
ideas  of  our  own  than  from  any  real  obscurity  in  the 
texts  themselves. 

How  much  this  has  been  the  case  with  Scripture  it 
is  needless  to  say.  Dogmas  have  been  brought  to 
Scripture,  and  Scripture  been  made  to  square  with 
them,  instead  of  truth  being  sought  carefully  in  its 
pages,  or  by  comparison  of  Scripture  with  Scripture, 
To  the  true  interpreter  dogma  is  the  end  and  never 
the  beginning  of  Scriptural  interpretation.  In  the 
strict  sense,  indeed,  dogma  is  not  found  in  Scripture 
at  all.  It  is  deduced  from  it ;  but  it  is  the  product  of 
much  more  than  Scripture.  There  it  only  appears, 
in  a  limited  '  concrete '  sense,  as  bearing  on  religious 
feeling  and  character. 

We  cannot  too  highly  estimate  the  services  of 
Arnold  as  a  Biblical  student  in  his  time.      His  friend 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     65 

Bonaniy  Price'  has  perhaps  spoken  of  his  work  in  this 
direction  in  somewhat  extravagant  terms,  and  with 
too  httle  regard  to  the  work  of  others.  For  the  spirit 
of  genuine  historical  criticism  was  in  fact  largel}'  at 
work  in  the  years  that  preceded  the  Oxford  move- 
ment, not  only  in  Coleridge,  but  in  Hare  and  Thirlwall 
at  Cambridge,  and  again  in  Whately  and  Milman. 
Yet  more  than  any  of  these  men,  perhaps,  Arnold 
combined  with  critical  acumen  and  breadth  of  his- 
torical perception  a  devout,  inspiring,  and  solemn 
appreciation  of  the  spiritual  side  of  Scripture.  In 
exegesis  he  was  certainly  richer,  if  not  stronger  or 
clearer,  than  his  friend  Whately.  The  two  sermons 
'On  the  Interpretation  of  Prophecy' speak  a  deeper 
and  more  evangelical  language  than  the  essays 'On 
the  pecuHar  difficulties  of  St.  Paul's  writings.'  There, 
as  e\erywhere,  Arnold  is  not  only  Christian,  but 
delicately,  pervasively,  and  in  the  right  sense,  if  not 
in  the  commonplace  sense  of  the  word,  evangelically 
Christian.  To  the  impartial  student  of  these,  as 
indeed  of  all  Arnold's  sermons,  it  must  remain  a  sad- 
dening thought  that  the  religious  world,  both  Anglo- 
Catholic  and  Puritan,  should  have  once  denounced 
such  a  teacher  and  called  for  his  condemnation. 

But  it  was  neither  Whately  nor  Arnold,  but  the 
third  of  the  friends,  since  comparatively  forgotten, 
who  called  forth  the  loudest  denunciations  of  the 
time.  To  the  historian  of  religious  opinion  there 
is  something  highly  significant  in  the  successive 
agitations  which  were  excited  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land by  Dr.  Hampden.  According  to  all  unbiassed 
testimony,  he  was  a  particularly  gentle  and   peace- 

'  In  a  Letter,  Life  of  Arnold,  vol.  i.  p.  213. 
E 


66  Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

loving-  man.  Of  all  the  contentions  associated  with  his 
name,  '  his  only  part  in  them,'  it  has  been  said,  '  was 
the  pain  they  could  not  fail  to  occasion  him.'  He  was, 
however,  Mr.  Mozley  says,  'one  of  the  most  unprepos- 
sessing of  men.'  There  was  a  certain  stolidity  about 
him  that  contrasted  strongly  with  the  bright,  vivacious, 
and  singularly  loveable  figures  with  whom  the  eyes  of 
Oriel  men  were  then  familiarised.  Even  the  less  agree- 
able men  had  life,  candour,  and  not  a  little  humour. 
Hampden's  face  was  inexpressive,  his  head  was  set 
deep  on  his  broad  shoulders,  and  his  voice  was  harsh 
and  unmodulated.  Some  one  said  of  him  that  he 
'stood  before  you  like  a  milestone  and  brayed  at  you 
like  a  jackass.'  ^  We  have  quoted  these  words,  cer- 
tainly not  for  any  value  they  have,  but  as  a  piquant 
expression  of  old  Oxford  humour — I  suppose.  In  Mr. 
Mozley's  volumes  there  arc  not  a  few  such  sketches, 
but  none  more  animated  or  inspired  with  more  bitter- 
ness. The  book,  as  a  whole,  is  a  readable  collection 
of  old  stories  and  recollections  of  the  famous  men  who 
then  adorned  Oriel ;  but  it  is  almost  absolutely  worth- 
less for  any  other  purpose.  Its  judgments  of  men 
and  things  are  neither  candid  nor  intelligent.  It 
fills  one  with  astonishment  that  the  author  of  such  a 
book  should  at  any  time  have  had  influence  in  con- 
nection with  a  theological  or  religious  movement. 
Hampden  was  probably  what  is  called  a  'heavy 
man  ; '  his  books  are  certainly  not  light  reading  ;  but 
so  far  from  being  unloveable,  he  seems  to  have  been 
a  singularly  amiable  and  tender-hearted  man. 

But  what  then  was  his  special  offence  ?    And  why 
should  he,  more  than  any  of  the  early  Oriel  School, 

^  Reminiscences,  vol.  i.  p.  380. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeriers.     6  J 

have  been  the  victim  of  persecution  and  annoyance  ? 
The  real  reasons  are  not  far  to  seek.  His  success,  first 
in  being  appointed  to  the  Chair  of  Divinity  in  1836, 
and  then,  eleven  years  later,  in  being  made  Bishop  of 
Hereford,  was  unacceptable  to  many.'  His  pamphlet, 
in  1834,  advocating  the  admission  of  Dissenters  to  the 
University,  was  not  only  unacceptable  but  deeply 
offensive.^  The  man  who,  at  that  date,  wrote  in 
Oxford  as  follows,  could  only  be  regarded  equally 
by  Anglicans  and  Puritans  with  much  dislike.  '  I 
do  not  scruple,'  he  says,  '  to  avow  myself  favourable 
to  a  removal  of  all  tests,  so  far  as  they  are  employed 
as  securities  of  Orthodoxy.  Tests  are  no  part  of 
religious  education.'  But  further,  Hampden  in  his 
very  earliest  work  on  The  Philosophical  Evidence  of 
Christianity  (1827),^  and  again,  in  his  famous  Bamp- 
ton  Lectures  (1832),  assailed  what  has  long  been  and 
continues  to  be  the  very  apple  of  the  traditional 
theologian's  eye — the  vast  fabric  of '  logical  theology.' 
The  whole  aim  of  his  Bampton  Lectures  was  to 
explain  how  such  a  theology  had  grown  up  under  the 
influence  of  the  scholastic  philosophy.      It  was,    in 

1  Was  there  not  something  also  in  his  having  snatched  the  Chair  of 
Moral  Philosophy  from  Newman  in  1834? 

^H.R.H.  the  Duke  of  Sussex  wrote  (June  1837)  to  Dr.  Hampden: 
'The  unfair  and  unjust  attacks  on  your  "Bampton  Lectures"  were 
all  the  more  disreputable,  because  unheard  of  until  a  public  testimony 
of  the  approval  of  a  liberal  government  had  been  conferred  on  you.  I 
fear  that  jealousy,  not  justice,  was  the  prompter  to  such  acts.'  Lord 
Radnor,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  said,  '  He  had  no  doubt  that  all  the 
hostility  to  him  (Dr.  H.)  arose  from  his  advocating  the  admission  of 
dissenters  to  the  University.' 

'  Essay  on  the  Philosophical  Evidence  of  Christianity  ;  or  the  credi- 
bility obtained  to  a  Scriptural  Revelation,  from  its  coincidence  with  the 
facts  of  nature.     1827. 


68         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

his  view,  no  Divine  product  nor  even  any  directly 
derivative  product  of  Divine  revelation.  It  was 
largely  a  purely  human  compound,  based  on  the  logical 
terminology  of  the  Patristic  and  Mediaeval  schools, 
and  instead  of  being  a  blessing  to  the  Church  it  had, 
as  he  supposed  and  said,  been  in  many  ways  a  curse, 
'  the  principal  obstacle  to  the  union  and  peace  of  the 
Church.'  '  The  combination  and  analyses  of  words 
which  the  logical  theology  has  produced  have  given 
occasion,'  in  his  own  words,  '  to  the  passions  of  men 
to  arm  themselves  in  behalf  of  the  phantoms  thus 
called  into  being.' 

The  wonder  is  not  that  such  sentiments  raised  a 
commotion  when  they  came  to  be  understood,  but 
that  they  should  not  have  excited  more  attention 
when  they  were  delivered.  There  was  nothing  essen- 
tially untrue  or  dangerous  in  them,  but  they  touched 
to  the  very  core  the  dogmatic  spirit.  Whately 
had  assailed  many  popular  theological  errors, 
dogmas  which  he  considered  to  be  mistakenly  iden- 
tified with  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul.  Arnold  had 
proclaimed  his  dislike  of  theological  technicalities  by 
divesting  his  own  preaching  of  them  entirely,  and 
setting  forth  in  ordinary  language  and  direct  and 
simple  forms  for  his  parishioners,  and  afterwards  for 
his  schoolboys,  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth  as  it 
is  in  Jesus.  Both  had,  by  their  broader  interpreta- 
tions of  Scripture,  emphasised  the  distinction  between 
the  simple  apostolic  doctrine  and  later  elaborate 
theologies.  But  Hampden  did  more  than  this.  He 
explained,  or  endeavoured  to  explain,  how  the  earlier 
Scriptural  faith  had  passed  into  later  creeds  and 
theologies.     And  it  is  strange,  but  true,  that  to  the 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners,     69 

polemical  Theologian  explanation  is  often  more 
exasperating  than  contradiction}  Not  only  so,  but 
the  principle  of  explanation  with  which  Hampden 
worked,  not  merely  threatened  this  or  that  tradi- 
tional dogma,  but  was  a  solvent  of  all.  The  whole 
fabric  of  patristic,  mediseval,  and  Anglo-Catholic 
theology  seemed  to  go  down  before  it,  and  to  be  con- 
verted into  nothing  but  a  phantasmal  terminology. 
The  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  in  its  Athanasian  "form, 
vanished  into  a  mere  series  of  scholastic  propositions. 
This,  and  nothing  less  than  this,  was  the  contention 
of  his  opponents  afterwards.  The  famous  pamphlet, 
Elucidation  of  Dr.  Hampden's  Theological  Statements, 
attributed  to  Dr.  Newman  and  denounced  by  Dr. 
Arnold,  as  containing  a  series  of  deliberate  misrepre- 
sentations ('  falsehoods '  is  Arnold's  word,  but  we  shrink 
from  using  it),  took  up  this  ground.  Dr.  Pusey  took 
the  same  ground.  Samuel  Wilberforce,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, and  many  others  happily  forgotten,  virtually 
took  the  same  ground  ;  and  this  in  face  of  Hampden's 
own  statement  in  his  lectures  that  the  Trinitarian 
doctrine  itself,  in  its  scriptural  simplicity,  '  emerged 
from  the  mists  of  human  speculation,  like  the  bold 
naked  land  on  which  an  atmosphere  of  fog  had  for 
a  while  rested  and  then  been  dispersed.' 

The  wonder,  then,  truly  is,  in  the  light  of  all  that 
was  afterwards  said  and  written  of  the  Bampton  Lec- 
tures, that  they  passed  at  the  time  without  hostile 
criticism.     Not  only  did  they  do  so,  but,  according  to 

^  Such  a  sentence  as  the  following  may  be  supposed  to  have  been 
particularly  exasperating:  'Whilst  theologians  of  the  schools  have 
thought  they  were  establishing  religious  truths  by  elaborate  argumen- 
tation, they  have  been  only  multiplying  and  rearranging  theological 
language.' 


70         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Dr.  Hampden's  friends,  they  were  received  by  large 
and  approving  audiences.  Even  Mr.  Mozley  admits 
that  '  a  considerable  number  went  to  hear  the  first 
lecture.' '     Afterwards    he    says    they   were    neither 

1  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  all  that  Mr.  Mozley  says  as  to 
Dr.  Hampden  is  to  be  received  with  suspicion.  A  writer  who  still 
virtually  asserts  that  the  Bampton  Lectures  were  inspired,  if  not  com- 
posed, in  great  part  by  Blanco  White,  notwithstanding  the  testimony 
of  Dr.  Hampden's  family  to  the  contrary  (his  children  having  often 
played  in  his  study  while  he  was  writing  them),  and  the  abso'iute  dis- 
crepancy between  such  a  style  as  that  of  the  Lectures  and  Blanco 
White's  writings,  is  really  unworthy  of  credence.  The  story  was  a 
silly  and  false  scandal  at  the  time,  which  could  only  have  sprung  up 
in  the  atmosphere  of  ridiculous  gossip  often  found  at  a  University 
seat.  It  is  not  made  any  better  by  Mr.  Mozley's  new  statements  as 
to  his  being  a  witness  to  the  great  intimacy  which  prevailed  between 
Hampden  and  Blanco  White  in  183 1  and  1832,  while  Hampden  was 
preparing  the  Lectures.  Be  it  so.  Because  two  men  are  friends,  and 
take  constant  walks  together,  and  even  give  and  receive  '  material 
assistance  in  the  way  of  information,'  is  one  to  be  accused  of  having 
given  lectures,  and  published  them  as  his  own,  while  they  were  in 
reality  those  of  his  friend  ?  For  if  the  plagiarism  does  not  come  to  this, 
it  comes  to  nothing.  In  gathering  information,  and  even  getting 
'  material  assistance,'  surely  any  author  is  not  only  entitled,  but  bound 
to  utilise  his  friends — if  they  are  willing  to  be  so  utilised.  But  the 
whole  charge  was  a  silly  one,  hurtful  to  those  who  made  it,  and  de- 
spicable in  those  who  repeat  it.  It  shows,  moreover,  a  singular  lack  of 
intelligence  in  an  Oxford  litterateur  or  theologian.  To  any  real  insight 
or  knowledge  it  is  no  more  doubtful  that  the  same  mind  which  con- 
ceived and  produced  the  Essay  on  '  The  Philosophical  Evidence  of 
Christianity,'  when  in  London  in  1829,  conceived  and  produced  the 
Bampton  Lectures — with  whatever  assistance — in  Oxford  in  1832,  than 
it  is  that  these  two  books  were  published  at  their  respective  dates.  An 
injurious  and  unworthy  note  in  S.  Wilberforce's  Life,  vol.  i.  pp.  468-9, 
has  contributed  to  revive  this  scandal  about  the  composition  of  Dr. 
Hampden's  Lectures ;  but  it  contains  nothing  new.  The  fact  of  the 
prevalence  of  the  scandal — its  '  being  spoken  of,' — seems  to  a  certain 
class  of  ecclesiastical  critics  evidence  that  it  was  true.  Really  this  is 
only  evidence  of  the  facility  with  which  the  same  class  of  minds  pro- 
pagate what  they  wish  to  be  true. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     7 1 

'  listened  to  nor  read.'  But  the  fact  remains,  that  they 
were  delivered  with  some  degree  of  approval  three 
years  before,  and  published  two  years  before,  they 
were  found  to  contain  the  dangerous  heresies  after- 
wards attributed  to  them.  Both  Whately  and  Arnold 
dwell  upon  this  fact,  in  evidence  of  the  personal  ran- 
cour that  animated  many  of  Dr.  Hampden's  oppo- 
nents, and  of  '  the  folly  and  cruelty  and  baseness '  of 
the  calumnious  agitation  with  which  he  was  assailed. 

There  have  been  successive  agitations  of  a  similar 
kind  in  Oxford  since  1836;  Hampden  himself,  eleven 
years  later  (1847),  when  made  Bishop  of  Hereford, 
was  for  a  second  time  the  victim  of  the  same  perse- 
cuting and  unworthy  spirit.  But  none  of  these 
attacks  exceeded  in  noise  and  malignity  the  famous 
or  infamous  outburst  which  in  1836  assailed  the 
Bampton  Lectures  of  1832.  There  have  been,  as 
Whately  said,  '  other  persecutions  as  unjust  and  as 
cruel  (for  burning  of  heretics  was  happily  not  in  the 
power  of  the  Hampden  persecutors);  but  for  impu- 
dence I  never  knew  the  like.  The  exhibition  of  riotous 
and  hostile  feeling  was  '  startling  even  to  those  who 
had  not  anticipated  much  greatness  or  goodness  from 
human  nature.'^  '  Was  there  ever,'  says  Arnold,  'an 
accusation  involving  its  unhappy  promoters  in  such 
a  dilemma  of  infamy,  compromisers  of  mischievous 
principles  in  1832,  1833,  1834,  and  1835;  or  slan- 
derers of  a  good  and  most  Christian  man  in  1836?  ' 

As     soon     as     Hampden's     appointment     to    the 

Divinity  professorship  was  announced  the  outbreak 

began,  under  the  stimulus  and  leadership  of  the  High 

Church   party.      Representations   were   addressed   to 

1  Whately. 


72         Movements  of  Religions  TJiought. 

Government,  to  the  Archbishop,  to  the  Bishops.  A 
committee,  which  met  in  the  common  room  of  Corpus 
Christi  College,  was  nominated  to  conduct  the  prose- 
cution against  one  who  had  asserted  principles  not 
only  subversive  of  the  authority  of  the  Church,  but  of 
the  whole  fabric  and  reality  of  Christian  truth.  New- 
man and  Pusey  vied  with  each  other  in  setting  forth 
Dr.  Hampden's  errors.  A  Convocation  was  sum- 
moned^ to  consider  a  Statute  to  be  passed  by  the 
University  depriving  the  author  of  his  voice  in  the 
nomination  of  Select  Preachers.  The  *  non-placet '  of 
the  Proctors  at  the  first  meeting  interposed  to  prevent 
the  passing  of  the  Statute.  *  Instantly,'  writes  Mr. 
Nassau  Senior,  who  is  not  likely  to  have  exaggerated 
the  scene,  *  there  arose  shouts,  screams,  and  groans 
from  the  galleries  and  the  area,  such  as  no  deliberative 
Assembly  probably  ever  heard  before.'  A  second 
Convocation  was  called  for  May,  when  a  change  of 
proctors  had  taken  place,  and  the  obnoxious  and,  it 
is  believed,  '  illegal '  Statute  was  then  passed.  The 
press,  of  course,  from  different  sides,  whipped  up  the 
excitement ;  and  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Lords  in 
the  following  year  brought  it  to  a  height,  and  possibly 
helped  in  some  degree  to  allay  it.  The  fever  heat, 
however,  may  be  said  to  have  continued  for  two  years, 
and  even  when  it  calmed  down,  left  embers  still  burn- 
ing and  ready  to  flame  forth  again — as  it  did  in  1847. 
Great  names  of  statesmen  as  well  as  ecclesiastics  were 
prominent  in  the  fray,  and  came  out  of  it  with  a  some- 
what damaged  reputation.  The  Archbishop  (Howley) 
makes  a  poor  figure  throughout.  The  Duke  of 
Wellington  did  not  add  to  his  glory.     His  attitude 

^  March  22,  1836. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Coiigencrs.      7  3 

in  the  House  of  Lords  in  reference  to  Dr.  Hampden's 
explanations  was  neither  magnanimous  nor  intelligent. 
Mr.  Gladstone,  long  afterwards,  in  1856,  had  the 
grace  to  write  to  Dr.  Hampden,  expressing  regret  for 
his  concurrence  in  the  vote  of  the  University.  He 
had  not  taken  actual  part  in  it,  but  was  only  prevented 
from  doing  so  '  by  an  accident.'  The  letter  is  alike 
honourable  to  the  writer,  and  to  the  Bishop,  all  whose 
'heretical '  troubles  were  by  this  time  past.  There  is 
one  other  famous  name  in  the  renewed  persecution 
of  1847  that  bore  to  the  last  the  unhappy  dint  of  en- 
counter with  Dr.  Hampden.  It  is  one  of  the  melan- 
choly lessons  of  the  history  of  religious  opinion  that 
the  interests,  or  supposed  interests,  of  Christian  Faith 
should  too  often  overcome  the  interests  of  righteous- 
ness and  fair  dealing.  And  it  is  sad,  but  true,  that 
the  names  of  Samuel  Wilberforce  and  John  Henry 
Newman  should  both  bear  the  scar  of  'unfairness'  in 
dealing  with  this  matter,  which  the  most  ingenious 
defences  of  their  friends  have  wholly  failed  to  remove.* 

^  In  vindication  of  what  is  said  in  the  text  as  to  Dr.  Newman,  it  is 
enough  to  quote  a  single  sentence  from  a  letter  of  Bishop  Wilberforce 
to  the  Bishop  of  Exeter,  when  the  movement  against  Dr.  Hampden 
so  entirely  collapsed  in  1848.  He  is  defending  himself  to  his  friend  for 
his  having  withdrawn  the  prosecution  against  Dr.  Hampden  : — '  I  can 
only  account  for  my  words  seeming  to  mean  more  by  my  writing  in 
some  indignation  at  the  unfairness  of  the  Extracts  [by  which  Dr.  New- 
man sought  to  condemn  Dr.  Hampden],  an  laifairness  I  had  pointed  out 
to  Newman  in  1836.'  This  is  the  statement  not  of  an  enemy,  or  of  Dr. 
Arnold,  but  of  a  friend,  and  in  1836  a  co-operator.  Further,  as  to  Dr. 
Wilberforce  himself,  and  the  eclipse  which  his  name  suffered  in  connec- 
tion with  the  second  prosecution  of  Dr.  Hampden,  I  would  refer  readers 
to  vol.  i.  c.  vi.,  of  the  well-known  Life.  It  is  one  of  the  saddest  chap- 
ters in  an  entertaining,  but  by  no  means  edifying,  book.  The  dislike  of 
Dr.  Hampden  by  High  Church  writers  to  this  day  is  quite  '  pheno- 
menal,' as  the  newspapers  say.      Witness  a  review  of   Dr.  Mozley's 


74         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

In  comparison  with  his  host  of  persecutors,  the 
character  of  Hampden  himself,  uninteresting  as  he 
may  have  been,  shines  forth  with  consistent  lustre. 
I  will  venture  on  a  further  statement,  which  is  true  at 
least  to  my  own  experience,  astounding  as  it  may  be 
to  conventional  theologians  on  one  side  and  the  other, 
that  there  are  seeds  of  thought  in  Dr.  Hampden's 
writings  far  more  fertile  and  enduring  than  any  to  be 
found  in  the  writings  of  his  chief  opponents.  There 
is  hardly  one  of  the  principles  for  which  he  contended 
— the  supremacy  of  Scripture  over  tradition — the  in- 
dependence of  spiritual  religion  both  of  theological 
nomenclature  and  Sacramental  usage — above  all  the 
great  distinction  of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Scripture 
from  the  later  dogmatic  forms  in  which  it  has  been 
embodied,  that  have  not  since  more  or  less  commended 
themselves  to  all  rational  theologians.  Forgotten  as 
they  now  are,  and  never  in  any  sense  popular,  the 
student  of  Christian  thought  will  always  turn  to  the 
Bampton  Lectures  of  1832  with  interest  and  profit. 

A  few  words  must  suffice  for  the  two  other  names 
which,  although  not  belonging  to  the  Oriel  school, 
were  so  far  animated  by  the  same  spirit  at  the  same 
time.  These  names  in  their  full  significance  belong, 
we  have  already  said,  to  a  later  period  in  the  history 
of  religious  opinion.  They  are  rightly  noticed  here, 
however,  because  both  struck,  in  the  years  of  the 
'  noetic'  school,  a   note  of  theological  advance  which 

Letters,  in  the  Spectator  of  15th  Nov.  1884,  where  he  is  roundly  abused 
not  only  as  '  a  dull  writer  and  confused  thinker — but  an  intolerant 
bigot  till  he  became  a  bishop  '  !  How  strangely  inextinguishable  is  the 
fire  of  old  ecclesiastical  feuds  ! 


Ea7'ly  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     75 

resounded  widely  amid  the  so-called  'heretical'  noises 
of  the  time.  Thirhvall's  translation  of  Schleiermacher's 
Essay  on  St.  Luke,  with  a  lengthened  introduction, 
appeared  in  1825.  The  translator  was  not  then  even 
a  clergyman.  He  was  a  student  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  in 
preparation  for  the  career  of  the  barrister.  Connop 
Thirlwall,  however,  had  from  his  early  Cambridge 
days  been  almost  as  much  interested  in  theology 
as  in  literature  and  history.  Pascal's  Thoughts 
was  one  of  his  choicest  studies.  He  contemplated 
learning  Hebrew  while  still  at  school.  His  visit  to 
Germany  and  acquaintance  with  Bunsen  before  1820, 
not  to  speak  of  his  'inseparable'  friendship  with 
Julius  Charles  Hare,  strengthened  his  interest  in 
sacred  and  critical  studies ;  and  shortly  after  the 
publication  of  the  Essay  on  St.  Luke,  he  abandoned 
the  legal  for  a  clerical  career.  The  publication  of 
this  essay,  according  to  Dean  Perowne,  the  editor  of 
Thirl  wall's  very  interesting  letters,  'was  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  English  theology,'  as  well  as  in  Thirl- 
wall's  own  life.^     The  volome  is  entirely  critical  in  its 

^  The  latter  statement  is  made  specially  in  allusion  to  the  fact  that 
the  publication  of  the  essay  may  be  said  to  have  procured  for  him  his 
bishopric.  Lord  Melbourne,  who  had  taken  an  interest  in  his  career 
from  the  first,  read  the  Essay,  with  the  Introduction,  and  was  much 
struck  by  both.  He  had  wished,  therefore,  to  promote  Thirlwall 
even  earlier  to  the  Episcopal  bench,  but  the  bishops  whom  he  con- 
sulted 'expressed  a  want  of  confidence'  in  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
volume!  In  1840,  however,  when  the  See  of  St.  David's  fell  vacant, 
he  appointed  him  at  once  to  the  vacancy,  and  a  graphic  account  has 
been  preserved  (see  Torrens's  Memoirs  of  Viscount  Alelbourne,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  330-332)  of  the  interview  which  took  place  between  the  Premier 
and  the  Bishop-designate.  When  Thirlwall  waited  upon  him,  Mel- 
bourne was  in  bed,  surrounded  with  letters  and  newspapers,  but 
immediately  opened  the  conversation.  '  Very  glad  to  see  you ;  sit 
down,  sit  down  ;  hope  you  are  come  to  say  you   accept ;     I    only  wish 


76         Movements  of  Religiotis  Thought. 

character,  and  could  hardly  have  been  read  beyond 
the  circle  of  the  learned.  The  explanation  of  the 
interest  which  it  created  is  to  be  found  in  the 
{prevalent  stagnation  of  the  theological  atmosphere 
at  the  time,  and  the  current  notions  that  any  critical 
inquiry  into  the  composition  of  the  books  of  Scrip- 
ture, and  of  the  Gospels  in  particular,  was  inimical 
to  the  full  acceptance  of  their  sacred  character. 
Biblical  criticism,  notwithstanding  the  labours  of 
Bishop  Marsh  in  the  beginning  of  the  century,  was 
so  dead  in  England  that  even  Christian  scholars 
shrank  from  any  real  sifting  into  sources  or  text. 
The  inquiries  of  German  theologians,  so  far  as  known, 
were  looked  upon  with  suspicion.  The  Bampton 
Lecturer  of  1824,  Mr.  Conybeare,  had  sounded  a  note 
of  alarm  regarding  them,  which  was  taken  up,  as  we 
shall  see  in  our  next  lecture,  by  Hugh  James  Rose 
and  others.  The  sacerdotal  influences  which  were 
beginning  to  move  Oxford  were  equally  hostile  with 
Puritanism  to  all  German  criticism  and  divinity.  Then 
as  always,  even  to  our  own  time,  German  theologians 

you  to  understand  that  I  don't  intend,  if  I  know  it,  to  make  a  hetero- 
dox bishop.  I  don't  hke  heterodox  bishops.  As  men  they  may  be 
very  good  anywhere  else,  but  I  don't  think  they  have  any  business  on 
the  bench.  I  take  great  interest,'  he  continued,  '  in  theological  ques- 
tions,' pointing  to  a  pile  of  folio  editions  of  the  Fathers.  *  They  are 
excellent  reading,  and  very  amusing ;  some  time  or  other  we  mus*. 
have  a  talk  about  them.  I  sent  your  edition  of  Schleiermacher  to 
Lambeth,  and  asked  the  Primate  to  tell  me  candidly  what  he  thought 
of  it ;  and,  look,  here  are  his  notes  on  the  margin  ;  pretty  copious 
too.  He  does  not  concur  in  all  your  opinions,  but  he  says  there  is 
nothing  heterodox  in  your  book.'  It  is  a  fact  deserving  notice  that  :t 
was  to  Lord  Melbourne  also  that  Hampden's  appointment  as  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity  was  owing,  and  expressly  on  the  ground  '  of 
profound  theological  knowledge,'  combined  with  '  a  liberal  spirit  of 
inquiry  tempered  by  due  caution  ' ! 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Co7igcncrs,      7  7 

of  the  most  varying  tendency  were  slumped  together 
as  equally  heterodox.  As  Thirlwall  himself  wrote, '  It 
would  almost  seem  as  if  at  Oxford  the  knowledge  of 
German  subjected  a  Divine  to  the  same  suspicion  of 
heterodoxy  which  was  attached  some  centuries  back 
to  the  knowledge  of  Greek.'  Particularly  the  hypo- 
theses which  had  then  begun  in  Germany,  and  which 
were  destined  to  run  in  such  endless  series,  as  to  the 
composition  of  the  Gospels,  and  their  relation  to  one 
another,  were  viewed  with  jealousy  as  being,  in  the 
words  of  a  once  well-known  book,'  'not  only  detri- 
mental to  the  character  of  the  sacred  writers,  but 
also  as  diminishing  the  value  and  importance  of  their 
testimony,  and  further,  as  tending  to  sap  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  New  Testament.'  The  mere  fact  that 
the  Biblical  studies  of  the  age  were  mainly  pursued 
under  the  guidance  of  this  book — not  without  value 
in  its  day,  but  entirely  uncritical  in  its  spirit  and 
method — is  the  best  evidence  of  how  low  these 
studies  had  sunk,  and  how  little  the  theological  mind 
of  the  time  was  prepared  to  welcome  such  an  Essay 
as  Thirlwall  introduced  to  it. 

His  'Introduction'  is  a  singularly  enlightened, 
closely  reasoned,  and  wise  piece  of  writing,  like  all 
the  theological  disquisitions  in  the  shape  of '  Charges,' 
that  long  afterwards  came  from  his  pen.  He  admits 
at  once  the  inconsistency  of  such  inquiries  as  those  of 
Schleiermacher  and  his  forerunner  Eichhorn  and  others 
with  the  long  prevailing  doctrine  of  verbal  inspira- 
tion— a  doctrine,  however,  which,  although  still 
generally  received,  he  esteems  so  entirely  abandoned 

^  Home's  Introduction  to  the  Critical  Study  and  Knowledge  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures  (l8l8). 


yS         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

by  the  learned  as  not  to  require  refutation.  Nor 
does  he  think  the  more  flexible  theories  of  inspira- 
tion as  divided  into  'inspiration  of  suggestion'  and 
'inspiration  of  superintendency' any  more  tenable  in 
the  face  of  the  facts  which  the  text  of  Scripture  brings 
before  us.  He  turns  rather  with  approval  to  the 
'old  opinion'  that  Scripture  is  indeed  inspired,  but 
only  in  its  substance  and  spirit, — 'in  the  continual 
presence  and  action  of  what  is  most  vital  and  essen- 
tial in  Christianity  itself  And  this,  the  only  true 
and  tenable  view  consistent  with  the  actual  character 
of  the  Biblical  Literature,  has  no  need,  he  says,  to 
fear  'any  investigation  into  the  mutual  relation  and 
origin  of  the  Gospels.' 

This  was  a  strong  and  bold  attitude  in  1825,  before 
Coleridge's  Confessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit  had  seen 
the  light.  It  shows  plainly  how  the  critical  spirit  was 
working  in  many  minds.  There  is  no  evidence  of 
Coleridge  having  exercised  any  special  influence  over 
Thirlwall,  notwithstanding  the  latter's  close  friend- 
ship with  Hare,  and  participation  in  many  of  his  sym- 
pathies. The  connection  of  the  two  friends  was  on 
the  side  of  philology  and  history  rather  than  of  philo- 
sophy. Thirlwall's  mind,  moreover,  was  cast  in  a  quite 
different  mould.  Its  highest  attribute  was  a  dry  light 
without  any  mystic  depths  or  philosophic  aspirations. 
Changing  his  career  after  mature  deliberation,  he 
carried  with  him  into  the  Church  the  same  compass 
and  balance  of  judicial  faculty  which  would  have 
made  him  one  of  the  greatest  lawyers,  as  they  made 
him,  intellectually,  the  greatest  bishop  of  his  time.  No 
one  on  the  contemporary  bench  can  be  named  with 
him    in    mere    intellectual    magnanimity   and   power. 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     79 

There  were  other  non-Episcopal  names  greater  in 
theological  insight  and  in  the  sustained  contributions 
which  they  made  to  sacred  literature.  But  there 
were  none  who  brought  a  more  massive  learning  or 
more  rational  lucidity  to  the  discussion  of  theological 
questions.  He  was  a  true  Christian  sage,  fitted  to 
take  his  place  in  the  innermost  circle  of  the  sages  of 
all  time.  And  it  was  well,  as  Dean  Stanley  says, 
that  this  was  so,  and  that  a  bishop  of  such  massive 
intellectuality  and  large  wisdom  should  have  been 
one  of  the  ruling  spirits  of  our  time. 

The  name  of  Milman  does  not  pale  beside  that 
of  Thirlwall.  There  are  those  indeed  who  esteem 
it  a  still  more  brilliant  name  in  sacred  literature. 
So  far  both  were  alike.  They  never  acquired 
the  sort  of  popular  distinction  that  waits  on 
the  leaders  of  great  ecclesiastical  parties, — men  of 
the  stamp  of  the  late  Dr.  Wilberforce  or  Dr. 
Pusey.  Distinction  of  this  kind  was  alien  to  their 
nature.  Just  because  they  were  men  of  large  intel- 
lectual vision,  and  bore  the  crown  of  literary  as  well 
as  theological  genius,  they  were  unfitted  to  be  party 
men,  or  to  soil  their  garments  in  the  mire  of  ecclesias- 
tical contention.  Both  spent  their  lives  more  or  less 
in  their  study,  rather  than  in  the  religious  world. 
And  so  there  has  not  come  to  either  the  kind  of 
fame  which  resounds  in  this  world,  and  which  is  apt 
to  be  the  reverberation  of  a  common  noise,  rather 
than  the  intelligent  appreciation  of  intelligent  minds. 
Milman  is  probably  less  known  than  even  Thirl- 
wall. I  have  met  with  people  of  education,  and 
some  degree  of  culture,  who  were,  if  not  ignorant 
of  his    name,  ignorant   of  all    he   has    done.      They 


8o         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

were  astonished  to  hear  him  spoken  of  as  a  great 
historian.  They  had  never  read  a  word  of  his  History 
of  Latin  Christianity,  nor  even  of  his  History  of  the 
Jews.  They  had  never  heard  of  him  as  one  of  the 
greatest  names  that  the  Church  of  England  has  ever 
produced.  In  combination  of  pure  genius  with  learn- 
ing, of  sweep  of  thought  with  picturesque  and  power- 
ful variety  of  hterary  culture  and  expression,  he  has 
always  seemed  to  me  by  far  the  first  of  modern 
English  churchmen. 

Henry  Hart  Milman  was  educated  at  Oxford,  and 
was  a  conspicuous  man  there  during  both  the  earlier 
and  later  Oriel  movements.  He  was  distinguished 
as  a  poet  as  early  as  1820;  and  although  his  poetry 
has  failed  to  live,  save  in  a  few  hymns,  it  remains  an 
interesting  monument  of  the  early  glow  and  splendour 
of  his  genius.  The  Fall  of  Jerusalem  and  The 
Martyr  of  Antioch  contain  passages  of  great  power 
and  beauty ;  but,  like  the  poetic  efforts  of  a  great 
female  genius  of  our  times,  they  are  lacking  in 
creative  art  and  movement.  They  are  poetical  essays, 
rather  than  poems  springing  spontaneously  and  irre- 
sistibly out  of  the  heart  and  imagination  of  the  writer. 
Poems  of  this  secondary  class,  however  fine  in  part, 
never  survive.  Already,  in  1827,  Milman  was  Bamp- 
ton  Lecturer  as  well  as  Poet ;  and  his  genius  seems 
to  have  been  recognised  by  the  different  schools  of 
thought  that  had  risen  or  were  rising  within  the  Univer- 
sity. The  clcve  of  Brazcnose  College,  and  Professor  of 
Poetry,  did  not  however  join  himself  to  any  of  these 
schools.  Before  the  date  of  his  Bampton  Lectures  he 
had  already  diverged  into  paths  of  inquiry  entirely 
separating    him   from   traditionary  Anglicanism.     An 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     8 1 

Anglo-Catholic  of  the  Keble  or  Newman  type  he 
could  never  have  been  with  all  his  poetic  and  con- 
crete tastes.  But  he  did  not  any  more  connect 
himself  with  the  '  Noetic '  school.  Whately  and 
Hampden  could  hardly  have  been  congenial  to  him. 
From  the  first,  however,  he  belonged  to  the  school 
of  inquiry  and  not  of  tradition.  He  had  imbibed  the 
same  critical  spirit  and  love  of  original  historic 
research  that  we  find  in  Arnold,  and  Hare  and 
Thirlwall.  He  had  made  himself,  as  they  had  done, 
familiar  with  German  learning,  and  entered  as  early 
they  had  done  upon  the  application  of  its  principles 
to  history.  Not  only  so,  but  he  had  chosen  for  this 
purpose  the  most  difficult  of  all  departments,  the 
history  of  the  Jews,  which,  as  he  himself  said,  had 
been  looked  upon  as  forbidden  ground.  He  resolved 
that  there  was  nothing  in  so-called  sacred  history, 
any  more  than  in  the  history  of  Greece  or  Rome,  to 
exempt  it  from  the  laws  of  criticism.  The  same 
principles  which  proved  so  fertile  in  the  one  case 
would  yield  no  less  rich  results  in  the  other.  This 
was  the  key-note  to  the  great  work  to  which  he  had 
consecrated  his  life,  while  Whately  was  still  busy 
with  his  Essays,  and  Arnold  was  writing  his  Ser- 
mons. The  History  of  the  Jcivs,  in  three  small 
volumes  of  the  Family  Library,  was  published  in 
1829. 

No  sooner  were  the  volumes  made  public  than 
they  raised  a  wild  commotion,  not  only  in  England, 
but  in  Scotland.  All  the  current  religious  magazines 
assailed  them  as  subversive  of  the  supernatural  in 
Scripture,  and  generally  tending  to  minimise  or  de- 
grade the  idea  of  Divine  Revelation.     The  Christian 

F 


82         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Instructor,  the  once  well-known  organ  of  the  evan- 
gelical party  in  the  Church  of  Scotland,  while  ac- 
knowledging the  '  captivating  style  of  the  book,  and 
the  felicity  and  attractiveness  of  its  historical  pictures, 
is  forced  deeply  to  lament  that  it  should  ever  have 
seen  the  light,  especially  as  part  of  the  Family 
Library,  intended  for  domestic  use.'  So  violent 
proved  the  noise  against  the  book,  and  so  persistent 
the  prejudices  with  which  it  was  assailed,  that  the 
publisher  was  forced  to  stop  the  series  of  which  it 
formed  a  part. 

What  then  is  the  real  character  of  the  book  ?  It  is 
a  charming  and  attractive  narrative.  Forty  years 
ago  it  charmed  me  more  than  I  can  well  recall  and 
express.  For  the  first  time  one  felt  the  heroes  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  the  institutions  and  usages  of 
the  Hebrew  people  described  with  a  vividness  and 
reality  that  made  them  live  before  the  mind's  eye  and 
brought  them  within  the  sphere  of  fact,  rather  than 
of  pulpit  convention.  Strange,  this  was  one  of  the 
very  accusations  against  the  History.  It  spoke  of 
Abraham  as  an  '  Eastern  Sheik '  or  '  Emir,'  of  the 
*  quiet  and  easy  Isaac,'  of  the  '  cautious,  observant, 
subtle,  and  kind  Jacob.'  It  pointed  to  the  undoubted 
fact  that  we  do  not  find  even  in  Abraham  '  that  nice 
and  lofty  sense  of  veracity  which  came  with  a  later 
civilisation.'  It  explained  the  overthrow  of  the 
cities  of  Sodom  by  the  inflammable  character  of  the 
soil  on  which,  and  of  the  materials  with  which,  they 
were  built.  It  made  nothing  of  the  then  received 
chronology  of  the  Bible,  which  has  really  no  higher 
authority  than  Archbishop  Ussher  in  the  seventeenth 
century.      It    recognised    the    exaggeration    of    the 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     83 

Scriptural  numbers  so  obvious  to  every  intelligent 
reader,  and  naturally  arising  out  of  the  circumstances. 
'AH  kinds  of  numbers,'  as  the  author  afterwards 
explained,^  '  are  uncertain  in  ancient  mss.,  and  have 
been  subject  to  much  greater  corruption  than  any  other 
part  of  the  text.'  And  so  long  ago  as  the  time  of 
Bishop  Burnet,  the  matter  was  left  to  the  free  judg- 
ment of  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England.  It 
explained  naturally  the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea,  and 
generally  brought  the  light  of  criticism  to  bear  upon 
'  the  Eastern  veil  of  Allegory '  in  which  much  of  the 
narrative  of  the  Old  Testament  is  invested.  Doubt- 
less at  the  time  these  were  startling  features  in  a 
*  History  of  the  Jews,'  and  those  who  are  familiar  with 
the  state  of  the  religious  world  then  and  long  after- 
wards will  not  wonder  at  the  violent  excitement  which 
it  raised.  In  truth,  however,  Milman,  in  the  light  of 
such  Old  Testament  criticism  as  we  are  now  familiar 
with,  must  be  pronounced  a  highly  conservative  his- 
torian. Our  modern  schools  would,  I  fear,  judge  him 
'  unscientific'  He  repudiated  in  good  faith  any  anti- 
supernatural  bias,  and  deliberately  separated  himself 
from  the  extreme  school  of  modern  criticism.  It^ 
spirit  of  endless  analysis  and  love  for  turning  every- 
thing upside  down  was  thoroughly  uncongenial  to  his 
mind.  He  had  too  much  imagination  as  well  as 
faith  and  sobriety  of  temper  for  such  work ;  and  he 
remained  to  the  end  what  he  was  plainly  from  the 
first,  an  historical  genius  who,  while  urged  by  his 
critical  powers  to  sift  everything  to  the  bottom  and 
to  take  nothing  for  granted  merely  because  it  was  con- 
nected with  traditional  theology,  was  yet  no  less  urged 
—  *  New  Edition,  Preface,  1S63. 


84         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

by  his  poetic  and  concrete  tastes  to  paint  a  picture 
rather  than  give  a  mere  tableau  of  critical  processes. 
Erudite  as  any  German,  and  familiar  to  the  time  of 
his   death  (1868)  with  the  latest  results  of  German 
critical  speculation,  he  was  yet,  in  the  moulding  power 
of  his  great  intellect  and  his  large  knowledge  of  life 
and  literature — in   short,  in  his  gifts  as  an    historic 
artist, — as  unlike  as  possible  to  the  common  type  of 
German  theologian.     He  was  thoroughly  English  in 
his   tastes  ;    and    his    main    distinction,  like   that   of 
Whately  and  Arnold  and   Hampden,  was    his  clear 
recognition   of  the  difference  between  a  simple  and 
traditional    Christianity,   between    what    is    essential 
to  religion,  and  what  is  temporary  and  extraneous 
to   it.      This  thought  pervades    his    earlier    History; 
it   is    emphasised   in   the    Preface   to    the    new    and 
enlarged  edition  of  1863.     It  is  the  closing  thought 
of  his    great   History   of  Latin    Christianity.      What- 
ever part  of  our  ancient  dogmatic  systems,  he  says, 
may  fall  into  disuse  '  as  beyond  the  proper  range  of 
human  thought  and  language,'  and  however  far  the 
'  Semitic   portions  '  of  the  sacred    records  may  have 
to    submit    to    '  wider    interpretation '    '  in    order    to 
harmonise  them  with  the  irrefutable  conclusions  of 
science,'  the  '  unshadowed  essence '  of  Divine  Truth 
as  enshrined  in  the  words  of  Christ,  '  the  primal  and 
indefeasible  truths  of  Christianity,'  will  live  for  ever. 
All  else  is  transient  and  mutable — dogmatic  form — 
sacramental  usage — ecclesiastical  rite.     That  which  in 
its  very  nature   is    changing,  and  which  the  history 
of  the  Church  shows  to  have  already  changed  many 
times,  cannot  be  enduring.     But  the  '  truth  as  it  is  in 
Jesus '    '  shall    not   pass   away,'  '  clearer,  fuller,  more 


Early  Oriel  School  and  its  Congeners.     85 

comprehensive  and  balanced '  as  may  become  our 
view  of  it.  Here  the  very  note  of  the  '  Noetic ' 
School  is  struck,  and  Milman  therefore  deserves  a 
place  by  the  side  of  it.  He  is  greater  than  most  if 
not  all  of  the  School,  but  it  is  the  same  liberal 
spirit  which  speaks  in  it  and  in  him. 


III. 

OXFORD   OR  ANGLO-CATHOLIC   MOVEMENT. 

^^/"HAT  is  known  as  the  Oxford  Movement  had 
its  first  beginnings  in  the  same  centre  of  in- 
tellectual life  as  the  early  Oriel  School.  It  sprang  as 
a  secondary  crop  from  the  same  soil.  The  early  Oriel 
men  had  all  attained  to  maturity  by  the  year  1825. 
Hampden,  the  youngest,  was  then  thirty-two  years  of 
age.^  Keble  was  the  oldest  of  the  new  Oxford  group,^ 
and  chronologically,  as  we  before  remarked,  may  be 
said  to  blend  the  schools.  He  was  a  fellow  of  Oriel 
before  either  Arnold  or  Hampden.^  The  same  '  Oriel 
Common  Room '  where  so  many  '  learned  and  able, 
not  rarely  subtle  and  disputatious  conversations  took 
place,'  found  those  men  frequently  together  in  the  later 
years  of  the  second  decade  of  the  century.^  Who  can 
tell  whether  the  seeds  of  the  great  reaction  against 
liberalism,  which  Keble  formally  commenced,  may  not 
have  been  sown  as  far  back  as  those  discussions  ?  But 
the  author  of  the   Christian  Year  did  not  need  any 

1  Born  1793. 

*  Born  1792.     Pusey  was  born  1800;  J.  H.  Newman  1801. 

*  Keble  was  elected  Probationer  Fellow  in  181 1.  Hampden  became 
fellow  in  1814;  Arnold  in  1815. 

*  Keble  fancied  that  he  had  quitted  Oxford  officially  in  1817,  but 
he  became  College  tutor  in  the  end  of  the  year,  and  remained  more  or 
less  closely  connected  with  the  College  till  1823. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.      87 

provocation  to  the  course  on  which  he  entered.  He 
was  from  the  first  an  AngHcan  of  the  Anglicans. 
Unlike  Newman,  he  had  no  evangelical  or  liberal 
preconceptions  to  get  rid  of  He  was  a  Tory  of  the 
old  school,  to  whom  the  Church  of  England  was  not 
only  dear,  but  to  whom  there  was  no  other  Church.^ 
The  Christian  Year  had  already  appeared  in  1827, 
and  when  the  strain  of  the  liberal  storm  came  in 
1832,  and  all  the  spirit  of  the  young  Oxford  Church- 
men was  stirred  within  them,  it  was  only  natural 
that  he,  quiet  but  intensely  dogmatic  as  he  was, 
should  have  taken  a  temporaiy  lead.  Dr.  Newman 
has  expressly  signalised  his  famous  Assize  Sermon 
in  the  summer'  of  1833,  and  published  under  the 
title  of  National  Apostasy,  as  the  formal  beginning 
of  the  movement.^ 

The  same  master  hand  has  sketched  the  general 
influences  under  which  the  movement  arose.  The 
new  literary  spirit  of  the  time,  the  poetry  of  the  Lake 
School,  the  mediaeval  romanticism  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  the  philosophy  of  Coleridge,  all  bore  their 
share  in  deepening  men's  thoughts  and  awakening 
the  thirst  after  nobler  ideas  in  religion  as  in  other 
things.  It  is  a  special  tribute  to  the  far-reaching 
genius  of  our  countryman  that  his  romances  should 
have  not  only  been  the  delight  of  thousands,  but 
should  have  stimulated  the  enthusiasm  for  a  richer 
culture,  and  prepared  the  mental  soil  everywhere  for 

^  Yet  he  says  in  one  of  his  letters  to  his  biographer,  Sir  J.  T. 
Coleridge,  '  I  was  myself  inclined  to  Eclecticism  at  one  time.'  A  very 
mild  inclination  of  this  sort  may  have  marked  his  earliest  Oriel  days, 
but  no  trace  of  it  remains  in  any  of  his  writings. 

*  14th  July.  *  Apologia,  p,  loa 


SS         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

larger  conceptions  of  society  and  of  the  Church.  As 
may  be  supposed,  the  opinion  expressed  by  Newman 
of  Coleridge  is  a  modified,  while  a  highly  significant 
one.  'While  history  in  prose  and  verse,'  he  says, 
'  was  thus  made  the  instrument  of  church  feelings 
and  opinions,  a  philosophical  basis  for  the  same  was 
laid  in  England  by  a  very  original  thinker,  who,  while 
he  indulged  a  liberty  of  speculation  which  no  Chris- 
tian can  tolerate,  yet  after  all  instilled  a  higher  philo- 
sophy into  inquiring  minds  than  they  had  hitherto 
been  accustomed  to  accept.  In  this  way  he  made 
trial  of  his  age,  and  succeeded  in  interesting  its  genius 
in  the  cause  of  Catholic  truth.' ^ 

During  the  crisis  which  followed  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832,  there  were  evidently  two  currents  of  religious 
opinion  running  strongly — the  one  more  or  less  in 
sympathy  with  the  prevailing  liberalism,  and  the 
other  strongly  against  it.  This  latter  current  was 
reactionary;  but  it  was  something  more.  It  was 
negative — opposed  to  liberalism  in  Church  and  State 
— ^but  it  also  contained  within  itself  a  new  and  crea- 
tive conservatism,  one  of  the  chief  principles  of  which 
was  a  fresh  organisation  of  the  Church.^  This  is 
apparent  to  all  in  the  sequel  of  events.  But  what  is 
less  understood  is  the  extent  to  which  these  two 
currents  crossed  one  another  and  intermingled  before 
they  took  their  respective  directions.  They  not  only 
for  a  time   lay  side  by  side   in  the   bosom   of  Oriel 

*  Apologia,  p.  185,  quoted  from  an  Article  by  himself  in  the 
British  Critic,  1839. 

*  This  is  tnie  of  Scotland  as  well  as  England.  The  parallelism 
between  the  rise  of  High  Churchism  in  England  and  Scotland  during 
the  decade  1832-42  has  yet  to  be  intelligently  described. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.      89 

College,  but  both  the  men  who  in  the  end  led  the 
conservative  reaction  for  a  time  inclined  to  liberalism. 

Dr.  Newman  has  told  us  this  of  himself  He  says, 
indeed,  that  whatever  may  have  been  Whately's 
influence  over  him,  he  was  never  inclined  to  his  theo- 
logy. Yet  in  the  very  same  breath  he  tells  us  that 
there  was  a  time  in  his  Oriel  experience  when  he  was 
beginning  '  to  prefer  intellectual  excellence  to  moral.* 
He  '  was  drifting  in  the  direction  of  liberalism,'  and 
commonly  understood,  as  we  shall  see,  to  be  a 
follower  of  Whately.  The  case  of  Dr.  Pusey  is  a 
more  remarkable  one.  This  great  theologian  and 
leader,  so  identified  with  the  highest  development  of 
the  dogmatic  spirit  in  England,  was,  in  the  beginning 
of  his  career,  supposed  to  be  and  vigorously  denounced 
as  a  theological  liberal.  And  there  was  good  ground 
for  the  supposition.  From  the  time  that  he  obtained 
his  Oriel  fellowship  in  1822,  to  the  date  of  his  first 
publication  in  1828,  the  line  of  his  main  inquiry  and 
thought  ran  in  an  eminently  rational  direction.  He 
had  been  abroad — attracted,  like  other  young  minds 
of  the  time,  by  the  phenomena  of  German  theology, — 
and  he  gave  the  result  of  his  studies  to  the  world  in 
a  brief  '  Historical  inquiry  into  the  probable  causes 
of  the  Rationalist  character  of  German  Theology.' 
A  second  and  larger  part  was  added  in  1830,  after 
the  author  had  become  Regius  Professor  of  Hebrew — 
an  office  retained  by  him  during  his  long  life. 

The  motif  of  Dr.  Pusey's  book  was  not  indeed  a 
vindication  of  German  Theology  m  its  rationalistic 
developments.  It  was,  however,  a  defence  of  it  from 
the  indiscriminate  assaults  contained  in  '  Discourses 
preached   before    the  University    of    Cambridge,   by 


00        Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Hugh  James  Rose,'  and  published  by  him  in  1825, 
under  the  title  of  The  State  of  Pt^otestantism  in 
Gerrnayiy.  Rose  has  been  panegyrised  by  Dr.  New- 
man. He  was,  so  to  speak,  a  Tractarian  before  the 
Tractarians,  a  man  of  warmth  and  energy,  with  fine 
sensibilities,  and  an  enthusiastic  love  of  what  he 
believed  to  be  divine  truth.  He  must  have  had 
many  high  qualities  to  have  left  such  an  impression 
as  he  has  done,  not  only  on  Dr.  Newman's  mind,  but 
on  many  minds  of  a  different  order.  But  he  had 
also  many  of  the  vices  of  his  school,  invincible 
prejudice,  incapacity  of  discrimination,  ignorance  of 
historic  method,  lack  of  tolerance  and  sympathy 
beyond  the  range  of  the  Church  of  England.^  In 
contrast  to  Rose's  book,  Pusey's  is  an  eminently  fair, 
reasonable,  and  candid  inquiry,  liberal,  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  word,  as  recognising  what  is  good  no  less 
than  what  is  bad  in  German  theology,  and  especially 
as  setting  the  worst  phases  of  German  rationalism  in 
the  light  of  the  causes  which  have  operated  in  pro- 
ducing them.  The  author  was  no  more  in  love  with 
rationalism  than  Mr.  Rose,  but  he  understood,  as  the 

^  The  spirit  of  Rose's  book  may  be  judged  from  the  following 
sentence  : — '  If  it  be  essential  to  a  Protestant  Church  to  possess  a  con- 
stant power  of  varying  her  belief '  (by  which  he  means  revising  her 
standards  of  belief),  'let  us  remember  that  ours  is  assuredly  no 
Protestant  Church.'  We  can,  of  course,  only  judge  of  Rose  from  his 
book,  which  is  not  in  any  sense  a  good  or  worthy  book  ;  but  a  man  is 
so  often  much  better  than  his  books,  especially  if  they  are  polemical, 
that  the  feeling  entertained  by  some  of  Hugh  James  Rose  that  he  was 
the  most  intelligent  and  high-minded  of  the  theologians  who  set  the 
Anglo-Catholic  movement  agoing,  and  that  its  course  would  have  been 
different  if  he  had  been  spared,  may  be  well  founded.  Bishop  Words- 
worth of  St.  Andrews  has  expressed  this  opinion  strongly  to  the 
writer. 


Oxford  or  Anglo-  Catholic  Move^nenL      9 1 

former  did  not  do,  all  the  phenomena  which  went 
under  that  name,  what  varying  shades  of  truth  and 
falsehood  they  presented,  and  by  what  intelligible 
links  they  were  connected  with  one  another.  Nothing, 
indeed,  is  more  remarkable  in  Dr.  Pusey's  work  than 
the  breadth  and  power  of  historical  analysis  it  dis- 
plays, its  extreme  fairness ;  and  even  to  this  day, 
when  so  many  accounts  have  been  .given  of  the 
historical  development  of  German  theology  from 
different  points  of  view,  it  still  deserves  perusal. 

The  result,  as  may  be  supposed,  was  that  Pusey 
was  denounced  as  a  defender  of  Rationalism.  The 
liberal  spirit  which  he  had  shown  in  the  study  of 
strange  opinions  could  only  proceed  from  a  theological 
liberal.  He  was  accused,  among  other  things,  of  '  an 
intemperate  opposition  to  all  articles  ' — a  '  hatred  of 
all  systems' — of  impugning  '  the  inspiration  of  the  his- 
torical parts  of  Scripture' — of  speaking  of '  a  new  era 
of  theology'  (as  if  there  could  be  such  a  thing),  '  of 
scattering  doubts  on  the  truth  of  the  genuineness  of 
Scripture.'  This  was  the  reward  of  his  dealing 
fairly  with  a  difficult  subject.  It  is  pathetic  to  think 
of  his  early  and  his  later  career,  and  how  little  his 
experience  of  the  poisoned  weapons  with  which  he 
had  been  assailed  in  his  youthful  and  more  intelli- 
gent enthusiasm,  should  have  taught  him  the  Chris- 
tian duty  of  always  understanding  what  he  opposed, 
and  of  fairly  construing  the  motives  of  those  who 
differed  from  him.  Doubtless  the  dogmatic  temper 
was  strong  in  him  from  the  first,  notwithstanding  his 
large  knowledge,  and  the  higher  historical  temper 
which  he  everywhere  shows.  His  place  in  the  new 
movement  will  appear  definitely  as  we  advance.     In 


92         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

the  meantime  we  must  turn  to  the  true  soul  of  the 
first  stage  of  the  movement — Newman  himself,  and  his 
friend  Richard  Hurrell  Froude.  The  Apologia  pro 
vita  sua  is  still  our  best  text-book  on  the  subject. 
Mr.  Mozley's  Reminiscences  have  added  hardly  any- 
thing of  substantive  importance  to  its  history. 

John  Henry  Newman  is  almost  as  old  as  the  cen- 
tury, having  been  born  in  the  beginning  of  1801. 
The  son  of  a  London  banker,  who  had  married  the 
daughter  *  of  a  well-known  Huguenot  family,'  he  was 
surrounded  by  rehgious  influences  from  his  youth, 
and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  became,  under  Calvinistic 
guidance,  and  the  study  especially  of  a  work  of 
Romaine's,  the  subject  of  '  an  inward  conversion,'  of 
which  he  says  (1864),  'I  am  still  more  certain  than 
that  I  have  hands  and  feet'  Five  years  before,  Dr. 
Chalmers,  very  much  under  the  same  influences,  but 
at  a  more  mature  age,  became  the  subject  of  a  similar 
change.  Newman  retained  his  Calvinistic  impressions 
till  the  age  of  twenty-one,  although  never  accepting 
certain  conclusions  supposed  to  be  identified  with 
Calvinism — the  doctrine  of  reprobation,  for  example. 
A  well-known  evangelical  writer — greatly  studied 
and  admired  in  the  beginning  of  this  century — 
Thomas  Scott,  now  chiefly  remembered  for  his  Scrip- 
ture Commentary,  '  made  a  deeper  impression  on  his 
mind  than  any  other.'  To  him  ('  humanly  speaking'), 
he  says,  '  I  almost  owe  my  soul.'  His  death  in  1821 
'  came  upon  me  as  a  disappointment  as  well  as  a 
sorrow.  I  hung  upon  the  lips  of  Daniel  Wilson, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Calcutta,  as  in  two  sermons  at 
St.  John's  Chapel  he  gave  the  histoiy  of  Scott's  life 
and  death.     I  had  been  possessed  of  his  Essays  from 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.      93 

a  boy ;  his  commentary  I  bought  when  I  was  an 
under-graduate.' 

Newman  early  showed  a  dogmatic  as  well  as  a 
religious  turn.  He  made  a  collection  of  Scripture 
texts  in  proof  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  before  he 
was  sixteen,  and  a  few  months  later  he  drew  up  a 
series  of  texts  in  support  of  each  verse  of  the  Athan- 
asian  Creed.  Two  other  books,  he  says,  greatly 
delighted  him — ^Joseph  Milner's  Church  History,  and 
Newton  on  the  Propliecies.  There  are,  I  dare  say, 
some  here  who  remember  how  common  these  books 
were  in  all  religious  households  fifty  years  ago. 
They  recall  the  fragrance  of  a  home  piety  from  the 
tender  thought  of  which  no  good  mind  would  willingly 
part.  Newman  tells  us  how  much  he  was  enamoured 
of  the  long  extracts  from  St.  Augustine  and  the 
other  Fathers  in  Milner's  History,  and  how  he  learned 
from  Newton  to  identify  the  Pope  with  Antichrist, 
a  doctrine  by  which,  he  adds,  his  imagination  '  was 
stained  up  to  the  year  1843,'  or  till  he  was  forty- two 
years  of  age. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one  (1822),  nearly  two  years 
after  he  had  taken  his  degree,  '  he  came,'  as  he  tells 
us,  '  under  very  different  influences.'  He  passed  from 
Trinity  College,  where  he  had  graduated,  into  Oriel 
as  a  fellow,  and  joined  the  band  of  liberal  thinkers 
who  had  been  so  long  working  there.  How  far  he 
was  repelled  by  the  atmosphere  of  the  place  at  first — 
and  how  far  for  a  time  he  came  to  sympathise  with  its 
intellectual  spirit — it  is  difficult  to  say  beyond  what 
he  has  himself  told  us.  During  his  first  year  of  resi- 
dence he  says  that, '  though  proud  of  his  College,'  he 
'  was  not  at  home  there.'     He  was  very  much  alone, 


94         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

and  used  to  walk  by  himself.  Again,  we  have  seen, 
he  describes  himself  as,  some  years  later,  leaning  to 
Intellectualism,  and  even  as  '  drifting  in  the  direction 
of  liberalism.'  With  all  the  apparent  frankness  of 
the  Apologia,  there  is  no  doubt  much  still  to  learn 
as  to  those  years,  and  the  full  history  of  Newman's 
religious  opinions  will  only  be  known  when  we  know 
more  of  the  steps  of  his  transition  from  Evangelicalism 
to  High  Churchism,  and  how  far  he  took  liberalism 
on  his  way.  During  much  of  the  time  at  Oriel  that 
followed  his  appointment  as  a  fellow,  or  from  1823 
to  the  end  of  1827,  he  was,  according  to  his  brother- 
in-law/  identified  with  Whately.  '  It  would  not  have 
been  easy,'  he  says,  'to  state  the  difference  between 
their  respective  views.'  Newman's  religiousness,  how- 
ever, was  always  '  conspicuous,'  and  his  instinct  to 
conserve  and  build  the  fabric  of  Divine  Truth,  as  well 
as  to  analyse  and  expose  any  part  that  seemed  unsound. 
He  hated  from  the  first  any  movement  of  destruction. 
*  He  used  to  talk  of  the  men  who  lash  the  waters  to 
frighten  the  fish,  when  they  have  made  no  prepara- 
tion to  catch  them.'  Probably  no  one  who  then  knew 
Newman  could  have  told  which  way  he  would  go  in 
the  end.  With  a  keenly  inquisitive  mind  disposed  to 
search  to  the  root  of  religious  problems,  he  was  too 
logical,  too  dogmatic,  to  be  satisfied  with  Whately's 
position;  and  the  latter  soon  discovered  that  New- 
man's was  a  spirit  beyond  his  leading.  He  may  have 
been  wrong  in  saying  that  Newman  was  looking  '  to 
be  the  head  of  a  party '  himself;  and  yet  there  is  a 
side  of  his  character  that  suggests  this  view.  He  had 
a  great  love  of  personal  influence.  From  the  first  he 
*  Mr.  Mozley  married  in  1836  Newman's  elder  sister. 


Oxford  or  Anglo-Catholic  Movement.      95 

attracted  by  his  personality  rather  than  by  his  intelU- 
gence — by  the  authority  rather  than  the  rationaUty  of 
his  opinions.  He  never  seems  to  have  understood  any 
other  kind  of  influence.  In  this  kind  he  was  supreme. 
He  did  not  require  to  go  in  search  of  friends  or  fol- 
lowers. They  gathered  spontaneously  around  him, 
and  there  almost  necessarily  sprang  out  of  this  feature 
of  his  character  a  high  ambition.  Copleston  seems 
dimly  to  have  seen  such  a  future  in  him,  and  all  to 
have  recognised  beneath  his  shyness  the  growth  of  a 
new  power. 

The  same  year  (1827)  which  saw  the  publication 
of  Keble's  wonderful  volume  is  marked  by  a  decisive 
advance  in  Newman's  views.  Illness  and  bereavement, 
he  says,  came  to  him  with  awakening  effect.  He 
had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Hurrell  Froude  the 
year  before,  and  began  to  feel  the  sway  of  his  impe- 
tuous genius.  In  1828  Hurrell  Froude  brought  him 
and  Keble  together.  Keble  had  previously  been 
rather  shy  of  him,  he  says,  '  in  consequence  of  the 
marks  which  I  bore  upon  me  of  the  evangelical  and 
liberal  schools;'  but  their  conjunction,  under  the 
guidance  of  Froude,  laid  the  springs  of  the  movement 
which  burst  forth  five  years  later.  Henceforth  New- 
man bore  no  more  traces  either  of  Evangelicalism  or 
Liberalism.  All  fell  away  from  him  in  the  rush  of 
new  thoughts  which  were  to  carry  him  forward  in  his 
destined  path. 

Of  Richard  Hurrell  Froude  it  is  difficult  to  speak 
with  confidence.  He  was,  no  doubt,  as  his  brother 
tells  us,  'gifted,  brilliant,  enthusiastic — an  intel- 
lectual autocrat,*  with  the  dashing,  audacious  charac- 
teristics   of  such   a   nature.      Newman's   estimate   is 


96         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

more  detailed.  '  He  was  a  man,'  he  says,  *  of  the 
highest  gifts — so  truly  many-sided  that  it  would  be 
presumptuous  in  me  to  attempt  to  describe  him, 
except  under  those  aspects  in  which  he  came  before 
me.  Nor  have  I  here  to  speak  of  the  gentleness  and 
tenderness  of  nature,  the  playfulness,  the  free  elastic 
force  and  graceful  versatility  of  mind,  and  the  patient, 
winning  considerateness  in  discussion,  which  endeared 
him  to  those  to  whom  he  opened  his  heart.'  Again, 
he  says,  he  was  '  a  man  of  high  genius,  brimful  and 
overflowing  with  ideas  and  views,  in  him  original,  and 
which  were  too  many  and  too  strong  even  for  his 
bodily  strength,  and  which  crowded  and  jostled 
against  each  other  in  their  effort  after  distinct  shape 
and  expression.  His  opinions  arrested  and  influenced 
me  even  when  they  did  not  gain  my  assent'  The 
two  volumes  of  Remains  published  after  his  death, 
in  1836,  so  far  bear  out  this  impression,  of  a  lively 
and  versatile  genius,  warm-hearted  and  dashing. 
But  the  faults  of  such  a  genius  are  still  more  con- 
spicuous than  the  merits.  The  volumes  are  full 
of  violent  misjudgments,  riotous  prejudice,  silly  in- 
trospection, and  here  and  there  of  downright  nonsense. 
It  fills  one  with  amazement,  I  confess,  that  men  like 
Keble  and  Newman  should  have  sanctioned,  even 
taken  a  pleasure  in  their  publication.  Many  of  the 
sayings  are  more  like  those  of  a  foolish,  clever  boy 
than  anything  else.  Bred  in  ecclesiastical  toryism. 
with  'the  contempt  of  an  intellectual  aristocrat  for 
private  judgment  and  the  rights  of  man,'  Hurrel' 
Froude's  Oxford  learning  seems  not  only  to  have 
fostered  his  essentially  narrow  spirit,  but  to  have 
added  to  it  a  species  of  intellectual  petulance  which 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.      97 

would    be    offensive,    if    it    were    not    ludicrous    in 
absurdity.^ 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  highly  the  promise  of 
such  a  genius ;  and  the  Remains  are  now,  with  all 
their  crude  jauntiness,  very  dull  reading.  They  have 
none  of  the  bright  vivacity  of  Sterling's  essays,  or 
the  spontaneous  humour  that  might  redeem  their 
petulance.  There  are  no  seeds  of  thought  in  them — 
nothing,  for  happy  suggestiveness  or  rich  if  imma- 
ture power,  fitted  to  live  in  any  mortal  memory.  The 
extravagance  is  often  little  more  than  ignorance,  and 
the  audacity,  impudence.  Probably  the  author  would 
have  become  wiser  if  he  had  lived.  He  seems  to 
have  had  ample  knowledge  on  such  subjects  as  Church 
Architecture  and  Ancient  Liturgies.  Confessedly  his 
'  religious  views  never  reached  their  ultimate  conclu- 
sion.' It  must  remain  doubtful,  however,  whether  a 
man,  so  lacking  in  sense  at  the  age  of  thirty-two,  would 
have  ever  grown  into  wise  activity.  The  combination 
which  he  presents  of  formal  deference  to  authority 
with  essential  irreverence  is  especially  to  be  noted. 
Episcopacy  is  sacred  to  him,  but  the  individual 
bishop  contemptible.  All  is  right  which  he  thinks 
riglit — nothing  good  which  does  not  commend  itself 
to  his  uninformed  and  headstrong  judgment.  To 
what  this  spirit  has  come  in  ecclesiastical  England 
it  is  needless  to  say.     The  strange  thing  is  that  a 

•  Witness  the  following  : — *  Really  I  hate  the  Reformation  and  the 
Reformers  more  and  more.  How  beautifully  the  Edinburgh  Review 
[1835]  has  shown  up  Luther,  Melanchthon,  and  Co.'  'Your  trumpeiy 
principle  about  Scripture  being  the  sole  rule  of  Faith,'  etc.  Again,  of  a 
different  kind  :  '  Looked  with  greediness  to  see  if  there  was  goose  on 
the  table.  Meant  to  have  kept  a  fast,  and  did  abstain  from  dinner, 
but  at  tea,  ate  buttered  toast.' 

G 


98         Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

temper  like  this,  so  conspicuously  typified  in  Froude, 
and  so  largely  represented  in  the  party  which  he 
helped  to  form,  should  have  believed  that  it  was 
destined  to  regenerate  English  Christianity,  and 
to  make  it  once  more  a  living  national  power. 

Newman  evidently  saw  the  weak  points  of  his 
friend,  if  not  exactly  in  the  same  light  as  we  have  pre- 
sented them.  He  confesses  that  Froude  had  no  turn 
for  theology  as  such,  and  'no  appreciation  of  the 
writings  of  the  Fathers,  or  of  the  detail  and  develop- 
ment  of  doctrine.'  His  great  qualities  were  personal 
rather  than  intellectual.  He  was  the  knight-errant 
of  the  party — eager,  courageous,  opposed  to  what  he 
thought  shams  or  sophistries,  all  unconscious,  like 
knight-errants  in  general,  that  his  enemies  were  those 
of  his  own  disordered  brain  mainly.  His  impetuosity, 
however,  gave  him  a  sort  of  influence.  With  a 
singular  and  sad  simplicity  Newman  says :  'It  is 
difficult  to  enumerate  the  precise  addition  to  my 
theological  creed,  which  I  derived  from  a  friend  to 
whom  I  owe  so  much.  He  made  me  look  with 
admiration  towards  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  in 
the  same  degree  to  dislike  the  Reformation.  He 
fixed  deep  in  me  the  idea  of  devotion  to  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  and  he  led  me  gradually  to  believe  in  the  Real 
Presence.'  Froude  could  hardly  communicate  what 
he  did  not  possess.  If  he  had  no  turn  for  theology, 
he  could  hardly  make  any  worthy  addition  to  any- 
body's creed ;  but  his  insatiable  eagerness  made  a 
deep  impression  upon  his  friend,  and  helped  to  incline 
him  towards  Rome.  Probably  the  road  thither  might 
have  been  found  earlier  if  he  had  lived.  'Subtleties 
and  nice  distinctions  would  not  have    stood   in    his 


Oxford  or  Anglo-Catholic  Movement.      99 

way.  His  course  would  have  been  direct  and  straight- 
forward.' ^  This  does  not  tell  us  much,  but  it  may  be 
held  as  indicating  the  conclusion  to  which  we  point. 
Hurrell  Froude  would  have  needed  no  '  nice  distinc- 
tions,' because  his  mind  was  not  of  a  distinguishing 
order.  He  had  none  of  the  scruples  of  wide  know- 
ledge, or  of  the  rational  habit  that  looks  on  both  sides 
of  a  question.  He  had  no  occasion  to  '  minimise 
doctrines,'  or  make  a  wry  face  over  principles,  many 
of  which  he  had  already  swallowed  in  all  their  enor- 
mity. The  only  question  that  can  remain  is  whether, 
had  he  lived,  he  would  not  have  carried  his  friend  to 
Rome  faster  than  he  travelled.  That  he  should  ever 
have  taken  the  lead,  or  competed  with  Newman  as 
'  the  master  spirit  of  the  movement,'  ^  is  hardly  to  be 
imagined ;  but  his  more  downright  and  unhesitating 
impulses  would  almost  certainly  have  driven  the  move- 
ment more  rapidly  towards  its  predestined  goal. 

We  have  seen  how  Froude  brought  Newman  and 
Keble  together  in  1828.  And  if  he  had  never  done 
anything  else,  this  was  something,  as  he  supposed,  to 
boast  of  '  If  I  was  ever  asked,'  he  said,  '  what  good 
deed  I  had  ever  done,  I  should  say  that  I  had 
brought  Keble  and  Newman  to  understand  each 
other.'  Keble  had  been  Hurrell  Froude's  tutor,  both 
at  Oxford  and  at  his  curacy  of  Southrop.  He  was 
eleven  years  older,  and  no  doubt  greatly  influenced 
Froude,  as  Froude  in  turn,  according  to  Newman, 
acted  upon  him.  Both  w^ere  Tories  of  the  old  Ca\'a- 
lier  or  Anglo-Catholic  stamp.  They  believ^ed  in  the 
Church  not  merely  as  national,  but  exclusive.     There 

^  The  Oxford  Counter- Reformatio7t,  p.  176.  Froude's  Short  Stfi^s, 
etc.,  vol.  iii.  *  Mozley's  Reminiscences,  i.  125 


roo       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

was  no  other  Church  unless  the  Oriental  or  Roman 
Catholic.  They  were  men  of  high  and  honourable 
spirit,  and  yet  neither  their  reason  nor  their  religion 
had  taught  them  to  acknowledge  in  men  differing 
from  them  the  same  honourable  and  Christian  motives 
they  claimed  for  themselves.  Froude,  with  outspoken 
impetuosity,  did  not  hesitate  to  clothe  his  judgments 
in  the  harsh  language  which  naturally  became  them. 
Keble's  was  a  wiser  and  higher  mind.  He  saw 
around  him  with  a  somewhat  larger  vision.  In  all 
personal  relations  he  was  one  of  the  most  tender  and 
affectionate  of  men.  Among  his  friends  at  Oxford 
he  was  not  only  admired  but  revered.  Newman 
relates  with  unconscious  humour  the  estimate  in 
which  he  was  held.  '  There's  Keble,'  said  a  friend 
to  him  one  day  walking  in  High  Street,  '  and  with 
what  awe  did  I  look  at  him  ! ' 

Keble's  personal  character  deserves  all  that  can  be 
said  of  it.  It  is  of  the  type  beautiful,  and  few  could 
have  known  him  without  being  the  better  for  converse 
with  such  a  high  and  gentle  nature.  His  poetic  and 
gracious  gifts  are  embalmed  in  the  Christian  Year, 
which  has  touched  so  many  hearts.  There  is  an  in- 
effable sweetness  in  its  verse.  Christian  experience 
may  outgrow  the  savour,  but  it  lingers  like  a  delight- 
ful fragrance  in  the  memory.  To  Keble,  as  we  have 
already  said,  more  than  to  any  other  leader,  the 
Oxford  Movement  was  the  natural  outcome  of  a 
course  of  training  and  thought  inbred  in  him  from 
the  first.  There  was  no  crisis  or  struggle  in  his  life, 
only  a  deepening  sense  that  Liberalism  was  evil  and 
Anglo-Catholicism  the  only  Christian  power  in  the 
land.     As  a  fellow  and  tutor  at  Oriel  for  about  twelve 


Oxford  or  Anglo-Catholic  Movement.    loi 

years  (i8i  1-1823),  he  had  known  the  earlier  Oriel 
spirit  in  its  full  power.  If  it  attracted  him  at  all,  as 
he  seems  in  one  of  his  letters  to  imply/  it  must  have 
been  for  a  very  brief  period,  and  the  reaction  must 
have  soon  followed.  There  was  a  gentle  but  immove- 
able obstinacy  in  his  Anglican  convictions.  I  have 
never  seen  in  any  one  a  more  steadfast  and  unmoved 
faith — faith  not  only  in  the  Christian  but  in  the 
Anglican  verities.  And  this  is  the  secret  of  what 
must  be  called,  even  with  his  higher  temper  and 
range  of  intelligence,  his  intolerance.  It  has  a  sort 
of  innocence.  It  is  a  Christian  virtue.  He  has  no 
idea  how  essentially  offensive  it  is.  Half  cradled  as 
the  Church  of  England  was  in  Puritanism,  it  is  to 
him  simply  evil.  He  can  see  nothing  great  or  good 
in  it.  Political  opinions  differing  from  his  own  are 
not  merely  mistaken — they  are  wrong,  sinful.  In  his 
correspondence  with  his  friend  and  biographer.  Sir 
John  Coleridge,  he  rebuts, — in  a  sort  of  playful  way, 
but  with  no  doubt  as  to  his  real  meaning, — all  idea 
that  there  may  be  good  men  on  both  sides  of  a 
question.  He  and  his  friends,  he  says,  call  this  the 
Coleridgian  heresy.  By  way  of  apology  his  bio- 
grapher says  that  his  convictions  were  very  deep- 
seated.  They  were  *  stuff  of  the  conscience.'  No 
doubt.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  they  were 
essential  parts  of  his  spiritual  and  intellectual  nature ; 
but  while  this  makes  them  intelligible  and  respect- 
able, it  does  not  make  them  the  less  bigotries.  A 
man  is  responsible  for  the  culture  of  his  reason,  as 
well  as  of  his  sentiments.  Keble  seems  never  to  have 
conceived  of  any  religious  truth  beyond  the  Church 

^  See  preceding  note,  p.  87. 


I02       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  England.  All  was  false  and  wrong  outside  of  it 
He  loved  some  who  differed  from  him,  among 
others,  Arnold  and  Milman,  who  loved  and  admired 
him  in  turn,  but  it  was  with  a  sort  of  pity  he  gave 
them  his  affection,  as  if  they  were  hopelessly  in 
error.  He  delighted  to  see  his  little  nephew  under 
his  teaching  snapping  at  all  the  Round-heads,  and 
kissing  all  the  Cavaliers.  You  cannot  be  angry  at 
bigotry  like  this,  which  smiles  upon  you,  while  it 
frowns  on  your  opinions.  But  it  is  not  admirable 
in  itself  It  is  mournful.  It  is  only  its  powerless- 
ness  that  renders  it  innocuous.  It  is  the  child  of 
ignorance,  quite  as  much  as  of  faith.^ 

Keble  did  much  to  encourage  Newman  in  his 
career.  The  Christian  Year  strengthened  in  him 
'  the  two  main  intellectual  truths '  which  he  had 
already  learned  from  Butler — the  sacramental  or 
typical  character  of  all  material  phenomena,  and  the 
influence  of  probabihty  as  the  guide  of  life.  All 
who  know  the  volume  will  remember  how  constantly, 
and  with  what  felicity  of  touch  the  sights  and  sounds 
of  Nature  are  made  to  minister  to  spiritual  instruc- 
tion and  discipline;  how  rich  the  natural  symbolism 
of  the  hymns  is  everywhere ;  so  that  Nature  be- 
comes the  mere  veil  of  the  higher  life,  the  vesture  of 
Divine  communion,  the  parable  of  Divine  mystery. 
All  this  met  a  deeply  responsive  chord  in  Newman, 
whose  own  poetry,  with  a  deeper  and  more  tragic 
vein,  is  full  of  the  same  symbolism.     The  principle 

1  Even  Mozley  admits  that  Keble's  '  sympathies  were  very  one- 
sided ; '  and  he  mentions  a  curious  instance  of  his  intolerance,  not 
otherwise  recorded,  so  far  as  I  know  :  '  that  he  induced  a  number  of 
his  neighbours  and  friends  to  sign  a  protest  against  Her  Majesty 
choosing  a  Lutheran  Prince  for  one  of  her  sons'  godfathers. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    103 

of  probability  again  played  a  powerful  part  in  the 
spiritual  life  of  both.  Accepted  by  faith  and  love, 
this  principle  became  a  source  of  religious  certitude. 
Transmuted  by  trust  it  was  turned  into  a  ground  of 
conviction.  The  same  idea  pervades  many  of  Keble's 
sermons,  and  it  was  ultimately  worked  by  Newman 
into  the  shape  of  a  cardinal  doctrine  in  his  Grammar 
of  Assent.  It  would  be  far  too  long  to  discuss  it  here. 
I  have  elsewhere  carefully  examined  it/  and  found  it 
at  the  root — as  I  think  all  who  probe  it  critically  must 
find  it — to  be  little  more  than  a  process  of  make-belief. 
Only  assent  strongly  enough  to  anything,  and  it  will 
imbed  itself  in  your  mental  constitution  as  a  verity  of 
the  first  order.  But  the  further  question  always 
arises :  What  is  the  value  of  a  principle  of  certitude 
which  is,  at  bottom,  planted  neither  in  reason  nor  in 
evidence,  but  in  the  mere  force  of  the  grip  which  you 
yourself  take  of  the  thing  believed  ?  Faith  is  good, 
but  a  faith  that  is  neither  enlightened  nor  deter- 
mined by  facts  in  the  shape  of  evidence,  but  simply  by 
the  blind  assent  with  which  the  mind  sets  itself  upon 
its  object,  may  be  as  much  a  basis  of  superstition  as 
of  religion.  The  argument  springing  out  of  such 
faith  is  admitted  by  Dr.  Newman  himself  to  be  merely 
'  one  form  of  the  argument  from  authority.' 

Such  is  a  brief  sketch  of  the  chief  figures  engaged 
in  the  '  Oxford  movement,'  and,  so  far,  of  the  prin- 
ciples which  they  represented.  We  must  note,  how- 
ever, more  clearly  than  we  have  yet  done,  the  several 
stages  of  the  movement,  the  causes  which  led  to  it, 
and  the  objects  at  which  it  aimed.  We  cannot  within 
our  limits  do  more,  or  extend  our  view  much  beyond 

^  Edinburgh  Revirw,  October  1870. 


I04       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

the  time  which  may  be  said  to  be  measured  by  the 
Tracts  for  tJie  Tinies,  or  Tractarianism  as  it  has  been 
specially  called. 

Some  years  before,  or  from  1828  to  1833,  Keble, 
Newman,  and  Froude  were  all  converging  towards 
some  definite  action.  Newman's  spirit  was  warm- 
ing within  him  as  the  dogmatic  principle  took  a 
firmer  hold  of  his  mind,  and  the  Church  seemed  more 
and  more  threatened  by  the  political  agitation  sur- 
rounding it.  Meantime,  however,  he  was  busy  with  his 
studies  on  the  Asians  of  the  Fourth  Ccntiiry,  as  Keble 
was  busy  in  the  preparation  of  his  edition  of  Hooker's 
Ecclesiastical  Polity.  These  studies  deepened  the 
Catholic  tendencies  of  both,  as  they  braced  and  fur- 
nished them  for  the  struggle  before  them. 

All  this  time  the  political  course  of  events  was 
fretting  them  intolerably.  Liberalism  was  not  only 
'  in  the  air,'  but  had  proved  its  ascendency  every- 
where. Sir  Robert  Peel,  at  the  time  member  for 
Oxford,  had  been  forced  to  give  way  and  introduce 
his  Bill  for  the  Emancipation  of  the  Catholics.  This 
led,  as  may  be  imagined,  to  a  violent  commotion  at 
Oxford ;  heads  of  Houses  divided  against  heads  of 
Houses,  and  the  Dogmatic  party,  with  Keble  and 
Newman  in  front,  violently  on  the  Orthodox  side.  In 
1 83 1  and  1832  the  political  atmosphere  became  still 
more  agitated.  There  was  revolution  in  France;  direct 
assaults  upon  the  Church  at  home.  'The  Whigs  had 
come  into  power ;  Lord  Grey  had  told  the  Bishops 
to  set  their  house  in  order,  and  some  of  the  Prelates 
had  been  insulted  and  threatened  in  the  streets  of 
London.'^     All   these   things   made   a  deep  impres- 

1  Apologia,  p.  93. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    105 

sion  upon  the  Oxford  group,  whom  sympathy  of  feel- 
ing and  opinion  had  by  this  time  more  or  less  banded 
toiiether.  Newman's  mind  was  excited  in  the  highest 
degree.  'The  vital  question,' he  says, 'was,  How  were 
we  to  keep  the  Church  from  being  liberalised;'  'the 
true  principles  of  churchmanship  seemed  so  radically 
decayed,  and  there  was  such  distraction  in  the 
councils  of  the  clergy.'  Keble  was  less  passionately, 
but  hardly  less  deeply,  moved.  Froude  required  no 
kindling  against  the  V/higs.  He  was  violent  against 
them  from  the  first.  He  could  have  forgiven  the 
Reform  Bill,  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  personal  hatred 
of  the  Whigs.^  Here  were  the  abundant  materials  of 
an  outburst  not  merely  ecclesiastical  but  political. 
It  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  political  as  well  as  the 
intellectual  or  theological  side  of  the  Oxford  move- 
ment. It  was  a  new  Toryism,  or  designed  to  be 
such,  as  well  as  a  new  Sacerdotalism. 

Newman's  and  Froude's  journey  abroad  in  the  end 
of  1832  and  spring  of  1833,  seems  strangely  to  have 
acted  as  a  stimulus  to  their  ecclesiastical  and  poli- 
tical excitement  rather  than  as  a  distraction.  In  the 
Mediterranean,  in  Sicily,  in  Paris,  'England  was  in 
my  thoughts  solely,'  Newman  says.  'The  Bill  for  the 
suppression  of  the  Irish  Sees  was  in  progress,  and 
filled  my  mind.  I  had  fierce  thoughts  against  the 
Liberals.  A  French  vessel  was  at  Algiers  ;  I  would 
not  even  look  at  the  Tricolour,'  and  so  hateful  was 
revolutionary  Paris,  with  all  its  beauty,  that  he  'kept 
indoors  the  whole  time'  he  was  there.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  he  so  far  forgot  his  Christian  charity  as  to 
speak  of  Arnold    in   the   manner  we  related    in   our 

•  Reinaiv^,  vol.  i.  p.  250. 


io6       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

last  lecture.  Such  a  remark  could  only  have  come 
out  of  very  harsh  thoughts.  Yet  we  know  that  he 
also  had  softer  and  tenderer  thoughts.  For  it  was 
then,  as  he  lay  becalmed  in  the  Straits  of  Bonifacio, 
that  he  composed  the  wonderful  lines,  '  Lead,  kindly 
Light,  amidst  the  encircling  gloom,'  which  have 
touched  so  many  hearts,  and  brought  the  tears  of 
spiritual  tenderness  to  so  many  eyes. 

Keble's  Assize  Sermon  was  preached  the  very 
Sunday  after  Newman's  return  to  Oxford.  This  was 
as  the  match  applied  to  a  long  smouldering  excite- 
ment. Action  followed  at  once.  A  conference  was 
held  at  Hadleigh ;  but  not  much  came  directly  of  this. 
It  brought  together  congenial  minds,  in  addition  to 
those  already  mentioned;  among  others,  Mr.  William 
Palmer,^  of  Dublin  University,  afterwards  of  Wor- 
cester College,  who,  Newman  says,  was  the  only  really 
learned  man  among  them,  and  '  understood  theology 
as  a  science.'  But  it  was  soon  felt  that  there  must 
be  personal  action,  if  anything  effective  was  to  be 
done.  Mr.  Palmer  and  others  were  for  a  committee — 
'a  board  of  safe  and  sensible  men.'  But  no  great 
movement  was  ever  begun  or  carried  forward  by  a 
committee,  or  by  a  system,  Newman  says ;  and  he 
points  Vv'ith  strange  audacity  to  Luther  and  the 
Reformation  as  an  example  ! 

Thus  impelled  to  do  something,  he  hit  upon  the 
idea  of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times.  He  is  careful  to 
point  out  that  the  idea  was  his  own,  and  to  take  all 
the  credit  or  discredit  of  the  Tractarianism  which 
became  the  great  feature  of  the  movement.  He 
wrote  or  re-wrote  and  revised  all  the  earliest  of  the 
'  Author  of  the  well-known  Origines  Liturgica. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    107 

famous  series.  As  Mozley  truly  enough  says,  no 
one  could  write  a  Tract  but  himself.  '  Others  wrote 
sermons  or  treatises,'  but  Newman  from  first  to  last 
was  tJie  Tractarian  par  excellence ;  and,  remarkably 
with  the  cessation  of  the  Tracts,  eight  years  later  he 
may  be  said  to  disappear  from  the  mov^ement. 

No  one  but  Newman  himself — not  even  he — saw 
all  the  significance  of  the  Tractarian  movement. 
Keble  mentions  the  publications,  almost  accidentally, 
in  a  letter.^  They  are  'a  paper  or  two,'  drawn  up  by 
some  friends  at  Oxford,  in  reference  to  the  present 
state  of  the  Church  of  England.  They  are  intended 
'to  circulate  right  notions  on  the  apostolical  suc- 
cession, and  also  for  a  defence  of  the  Prayer-book 
against  any  sort  of  profane  innovation.'  In  Dr. 
Mozley's  recent  Letters  the  project  is  spoken  of  in  the 
same  accidental  way,^  with  some  pointed  criticism  on 
the  peculiarities  of  Newman's  style  as  a  Tract-writer. 
But  there  is  reason  to  think  that  Newman  saw,  if 
not  all  the  consequences  of  the  Tracts  (that  was  im- 
possible), something  of  their  real  import  and  moment. 
He  had  the  penetration  of  genius  here  as  elsewhere, 
and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  give  from  the  first  'strong 
teaching,'  as  he  calls  it.  He  was  full  of  the  exultation 
of  health  and  self-confidence.  The  depression  under 
which  he  had  lived  abroad  had  passed  away — yielded 
to  '  such  a  rebound '  that  his  friends  at  Oxford 
hardly  knew  him.  No  wonder.  He  had  stripped 
himself  clear  of  all  the  older  integuments  which  had 
bound  his  religious  thought  and  action.  He  was  for 
the  time  a  reformer  or  restorer  of  the  ancient  ways. 

*  Letter  to  Dyson ;  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  220. 

*  Mozley's  Letters,  p.  34. 


io8       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

He  had  taken  the  '  ancient  religion  of  England 
under  his  protection  and  defence.  He  says  of  him- 
self, 'As  to  the  High  Church  and  the  Low  Church, 
I  thought  that  the  one  had  not  much  more  of  a 
logical  basis  than  the  other.  I  had  a  thorough  con- 
tempt for  the  Evangelical' 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  with  all 
Newman's  energy  and  genius  the  Tracts  were  at  once 
successful.  For  some  time  they  were  only 'as  seed 
cast  on  the  waters.'  As  we  read  them  now,  or  try  to 
read  them,  it  seems  strange  that  they  should  have 
ever  moved  any  number  of  minds.  If  some  were 
found  to  be  'heavy  reading'  at  the  time,  they  are 
now  mainly  interesting  to  the  theological  antiquarian. 
But  this  only  shows  the  more  how  inflammable  the 
clerical  and  lay-clerical  mind  was  at  the  time.  There 
was  a  need  for  movement.  The  Evangelical  wave 
had  reached  its  height,  and  was  on  the  ebb  every- 
where. The  old  Anglicanism  was  not  dead,  but  inert, 
beautiful,  but  still,  or  stiffened  to  hardness  in  many  a 
country  parish,  but  with  no  life  or  aggression  in  it. 
The  liberalism  of  the  Whately  school  had  never  pene- 
trated deeply  or  possessed  attraction  for  the  average 
clergyman.  The  limits  of  religious  thought  are  easily 
reached  in  any  age.  The  Tracts,  therefore,  backed  as 
they  were  by  higher  teaching  from  the  pulpit,  met 
a  want  in  the  religious  aspiration  of  the  time.  The 
Christian  Year  had  done  not  a  little  to  awaken  this 
want.  The  assaults  upon  the  Church  from  many 
quarters  had,  by  a  natural  reaction,  strengthened  it. 
The  genius  of  Newman — his  writing  and  preaching 
— did  more  than  all  else  to  satisfy  it,  and  in  doing  so, 
to  create  an  era  in  the  Church  of  England. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    109 

Yet  it  is  his  own  confession  that  the  new  impulse 
would    never    have    become    'a    power'    'if  it   had 
remained  in  his  hands.'     It  required  the  accession  of 
another  master  spirit   to  consolidate   the   movement 
and  give  it  adequate  momentum.    And  this  idea  of  the 
original  leader  is  borne  out  strongly  by  the  popular 
name    which    the    movement    ultimately    took — the 
popular  instinct  having  often  in  such  matters  a  won- 
derful insight.     Of  Dr.  Pusey  we  have  already  spoken. 
He  had  seemed  at  first  to  move  on  what  we  must 
judge  a  higher  platform  of  thought  than  mere  Church- 
of-Englandism.       He  had    not   only  studied   German 
theology,  but  he   had  understood  and  appreciated  it. 
He  had  shown  a  certain  liberality  and  largeness  of 
mind  rare  in  Anglican  Divines.      He  had  the  power 
of  entering  into  other  theologies  than  his  own.      But 
the  evils  of  the  times  had   also  come  home  to  him, 
or  the  wave  of  High   Churchism  had   gradually  sub- 
merged all    his   more    rational  tendencies   (I  do  not 
pretend  to  explain) ;  ^  but  when  the  Tractarian  move- 
ment   had   been   in   existence   for   about   two   years 
he    came   to   its  assistance.      Hitherto  he  had  stood, 
if  not   aloof— for    a    tract    of    his    on    Fasting  was 
printed   in   the   series  as   early  as  the   close  of  1833 
— yet  in  some  degree  apart.     He  had  not  given  to  the 
movement  his  name  or  influence.     But  in  the  end  of 
1835  there  appeared  his  memorable  Tract  on   Bap- 
tism, which   marked  an   epoch   in   more  senses  than 
one.      It    drove    Frederick    Denison    Maurice   away, 
frightened  at  the  company  he  had  been  keeping.      It 

^  Dr.  Liddon,  in  his  forthcoming  Life,  will  probably  throw  light  on 
this  comparatively  obscure  period  of  Dr.  Pusey's  life  from  1828  to 
1835- 


I  lo       Movements  of  Religions  TJwught. 

raised  the  party  to  a  position  which  it  had  not  hitherto 
attained.  No  one  can  describe  the  effect  so  well  as 
Dr.  Newman  himself  '  At  once/  he  says,  '  Dr.  Pusey 
gave  to  us  a  position  and  a  name.  Without  him 
we  should  have  had  no  chance  of  making  any  serious 
resistance  to  the  Liberal  aggression.  But  Dr.  Pusey 
was  a  Professor  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church  ;  he 
had  a  vast  influence  in  consequence  of  his  deep 
religious  seriousness,  the  munificence  of  his  charities, 
his  professorship,  his  family  connections,  and  his 
ea.sy  relations  with  the  University  authorities.  He 
was  to  the  movement  all  that  Mr.  Rose  might  have 
been,  with  that  indispensable  addition  which  was 
wanting  to  Mr.  Rose,  the  intimate  friendship  and  the 
familiar  daily  society  of  the  persons  who  had  com- 
menced it.  And  he  had  that  special  claim  on  their 
attachment  which  lies  in  the  living  presence  of  a 
faithful  and  loyal  affectionateness.  There  was  hence- 
forth a  man  who  could  be  the  head  and  centre  of  the 
zealous  people  in  eveiy  part  of  the  country  who  were 
adopting  the  new  opinions ;  and  not  only  so,  but 
there  was  one  who  furnished  the  movement  with  a 
front  to  the  world,  and  gained  for  it  a  recognition 
from  other  parties  in  the  University.  Dr.  Pusey  was, 
to  use  the  common  expression,  a  host  in  himself;  he 
was  able  to  give  a  name,  a  force,  and  a  personality  to 
what  was  without  him  a  sort  of  mob.'  It  is  in  the 
light  of  such  words  that  we  can  understand  how  the 
Tractarian  movement  came  to  be  characterised  as 
Puseyism — an  epithet  at  first  felt  to   be  a  vulgarism,^ 

'  Dr.  Mozley's  Letters,  p.  129,  where  we  have  a  curious  illustration 
of  the  manner  in  which  this  name  came  to  be  used  instead  of 
Tractarianism. 


Oxford  or  Anglo-  Catholic  Movement. 


Ill 


but  which  soon  acquired  such  notoriety  as  to  super- 
sede for  a  time  all  other  names. 

As  the  movement  advanced  it  gathered  not  only- 
strength,  but  a  clearer  logical  basis.  Newman  had 
to  clear  more  and  more  to  his  own  mind  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  he  was  acting.  What  the  principles 
of  the  movement  were  at  the  outset  he  has  plainly 
expressed  under  three  heads.  First,  the  assertion  of 
the  principle  of  Dogma — '  my  battle,'  he  says,  '  was 
with  Liberalism  ;  by  Liberalism  I  meant  the  anti- 
dogmatic  principle  and  its  developments  ;' — secondly, 
the  assertion  of  a  Visible  Church  with  sacraments, 
and  rites,  and  definite  religious  teaching,  on  the 
foundation  of  dogma ;  and  thirdly,  the  assertion  that 
the  Anglican  Church  was  the  Church  as  opposed  to 
the  Church  of  Rome.  The  dogmatic  principle  lay 
at  the  root  of  the  movement.  All  else  followed 
from  this  ;  and  this  principle  Newman  brought  with 
him  from  the  Evangelicals  among  whom  he  had  been 
trained.  '  From  the  age  of  fifteen,'  he  says,  '  dogma 
had  been  the  fundamental  principle  of  my  religion. 
I  know  no  other  religion — I  cannot  enter  into  the 
idea  of  any  other  sort  of  religion.'  Here  was  the 
exactly  opposite  note  to  the  '  Noetic '  school  of 
Whately  and  Arnold  and  Hampden,  whose  great 
aim  in  all  their  theological  writings  had  been  more 
or  less  to  discriminate  between  dogma  and  religion — 
to  show  that  dogma  is  a  later  growth  from  religion, 
and  not  religion  itself.  Not  at  all  that  the  Noetic 
School  looked  upon  religion  '  as  a  mere  sentiment ; ' 
but  it  was  its  work  more  or  less  to  show  that  the 
primitive  ideas  of  Christianity  as  presented  in  the 
New   Testament    are     distinct   from    later   dogmatic 


1 1 2       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

developments ;  that  Paulinism,  in  short,  is  not 
Athanasianism,  nor  even  the  theology  of  St.  John 
quite  the  theology  of  the  Nicene  creed.  All  this  was 
at  variance  with  the  dogmatic  principle.  It  struck  it 
at  the  base ;  and  with  Newman's  convictions,  it  struck 
Christianity  at  the  base.  He  afterwards,  indeed,  ex- 
pounded the  principle  of  development  in  his  own  way ; 
but  the  true  historical  conception  of  it  has  always 
been  unintelligible  to  him.  And  no  less  the  idea  of 
the  Church  as  a  Spiritual  community  of  diverse  forms 
of  expression  and  government — of  varying  nation- 
ality. This  idea  was,  if  possible,  still  more  repellent 
to  him.  Nothing  was  conceivable  or  of  Divine  right 
but  a  Visible  Church  with  definite  rites  and  preroga- 
tives— his  own  Church  of  course  being  this  Church. 
Romanism,  therefore,  at  the  outset  necessarily  in- 
curred his  hostility.  Anglicanism  v/as  the  only  Divine 
system.  '  My  own  Bishop  was  my  Pope,'  as  he  says. 
This  was  his  logical  position.  He  and  Keble  and 
Pusey  set  themselves  to  vindicate  it.  Theological 
argument  remained  in  the  main  in  his  own  hands. 
It  was  the  stress  of  his  logic,  we  shall  see — piercing 
sophism  after  sophism — that  at  length  drove  him 
out  of  the  movement*,  and  finally  to  Rome.  Keble 
and  Pusey  were  much  less  polemical,  less  at  the 
mercy  of  a  spirit  of  argumentative  restlessness.  They 
busied  themselves  with  the  historical  aspects  of  the 
question.  They  engaged  by  translations  and  other- 
wise to  prove  that  Anglicanism  was  identical  with 
Patristic  Christianity.  While  Newman  laboured  in 
an    elaborate   work  ^    to  show    that    Catholicism,  as 

'    The  Prophetical  Office  of  the  Church  viewed  relatively  to  Romanism 
and  Popular  Protestantism. 


Oxford  or  A7iglo-  Catholic  Movement.    1 1 3 

embodied  in  the  Church  of  England,  was  the  only- 
Divine  System  in  relation  to  Romanism  on  the  one 
hand,  and  Popular  Protestantism  on  the  other  hand ; 
Dr.  Pusey  began  the  well-known  Library  of  the 
Fathers,  which  remains  the  most  elaborate  literary- 
monument  of  the  movement.  It  is  curious,  in  look- 
ing back  upon  these  patristic  labours,  especially  in 
view  of  Dr.  Pusey's  large-minded  dealing  with 
the  phenomena  of  German  theology,  to  notice  how 
entirely  uncritical  they  are.  The  Fathers  were  taken 
without  question.  Neither  chronological  order  nor 
historical  method  regulated  their  selection.  A  heap 
of  documents  of  varying  authority,  or  of  no  autho- 
rity, were  cast  before  the  reader.  The  Ignatian 
Epistles  passed  unchallenged,  and  in  one  way  and  an- 
other play  a  significant  part  in  the  controversy.  If  a 
writing  contained  the  assertion  of  what  was  called 
Church  principles,  this  was  ample  guarantee  of  its 
excellence  and  genuineness.  The  very  thing  that  was 
suspicious,  became  the  index  of  authority — so  dead 
was  the  historic  spirit  in  the  members  of  the  school. 
No  movement  ever  started  with  a  larger  petitio 
principii,  and  the  premiss  only  swelled  as  it  advanced. 
There  was  endless  building  up  out  of  old  stones. 
This  was  confessedly  Newman's  idea  of  what  the 
Church  needed.'  But  Avhat  the  stones  themselves 
were  really  worth  was  never  asked.  The  translation 
of  Fleury's  Church  History  and  the  series  of  the 
Lives  of  English  Saints  all  came  from  the  same 
pure  appetite  for  tradition.  Whatever  had  the  note 
of  antiquity  was  to  be  brought  to  the  light,  and  the 
lineaments  of  the  Ancient  Church  were  sought  among 

*  Apologia,  pp.  144-5- 
H 


1 1 4      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

the  debris  of  mediaeval  and  patristic  times  rather 
than  in  the  Hving  pages  of  the  New  Testament.  The 
Patristic  Church,  or  anything  of  its  true  hneaments, 
came  as  a  refreshing  picture  to  many  minds  accus- 
tomed to  the  disguises  of  popular  Protestantism ;  but 
the  picture  certainly  no  more  corresponded  to  the 
original  reality  than  any  ultra-Protestant  representa- 
tion. 

The  Hampden  episode  already  described  proved 
the  fighting  power  of  the  party,  and  as  the  years 
passed  on  they  became  more  emboldened  and  aggres- 
sive. Newman  grew  vastly  in  personal  influence. 
His  afternoon  sermons  at  St.  Mary's  became  a 
spiritual  power.  They  deserved  to  be  so.  Here  he 
is  at  his  best,  away  from  the  field  of  history  and  of 
controversy,  searching  the  heart  with  the  light  of  his 
spiritual  genius,  or  melting  it  to  tenderness  with  the 
music  of  his  exquisite  language.  All  his  strength  and 
Httle  of  his  weakness,  his  insight,  his  subtlety,  his 
pathos,  his  love  of  souls,  his  marvellous  play  of  dra- 
matic as  well  as  spiritual  faculty,  his  fervour  without 
excitement,  his  audacity  without  offence  or  sophistical 
aggression,  appear  in  its  sermons.  He  was  a  preacher 
as  other  men  are  poets  or  orators.  In  these  years, 
1 838-1 839,  his  position  was  at  its  height,  and  the 
movement  was  reaching  its  climax.  As  the  decade 
closed  the  Anglo-Catholic  party  had  become  a  power 
in  the  Church,  and  '  an  object  of  alarm  to  her  rulers 
and  friends.' 

The  first  check  came  in  the  moment  of  its  power, 
when  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  in  1838  animadverted 
upon  the  Tracts.  Newman  professed  his  willingness  to 
stop  them,  and  even  to  withdraw  such  as  his  Lordship 


Oxford  or  Anglo-Catholic  Movement.    1 1 5 

objected  to.  His  Lordship  did  not  insist  on  this 
step,  and  the  Tracts  went  on.  But  the  pressure  both 
of  logic  and  of  circumstances  soon  developed  grave 
results.  Newman's  own  line  of  thought  rapidly  ran 
out  in  the  only  way  in  which  it  could  run.  From 
Antiquity  as  the  note  of  the  Church  and  the  via 
media,  he  passed  to  Catholicity  as  a  surer  note. 
Then  trains  of  thought  based  on  his  Patristic 
studies  came  to  shatter  the  idea  of  Catholicity 
as  applied  to  the  Church  of  England.  He  was 
driven  forward  from  one  point  to  another.  He 
stood  on  the  via  media  as  long  as  he  could.  The 
Church  of  England  was  a  true  branch  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  he  argued.  It  is  ancient  and  apostolical.  It 
has  the  true  order  of  succession.  Rome  has  yielded 
to  modern  errors.  But  about  1839  he  began  to  have 
doubts  as  to  the  Anglican  order  of  succession.  The 
'Catholicity'  of  Rome  began  to  overshadow  in  his 
mind  the  'Apostolicity' of  Anglicanism.  The  Church 
was  One,  quod  semper  quod  ubique  quod  ab  omnibus. 
The  Roman  argument  became  more  powerful,  the 
Anglican  more  doubtful.  The  great  Donatist  contro- 
versy deepened  the  shadow  on  his  mind.  The  Roman 
communion  as  a  matter  of  fact  represented  '  the  main 
body  of  the  Church  Catholic'  Were  not  the  Donatists 
by  their  schism  cut  off  ipso  facto  from  the  heritage  of 
Christ?  How  should  it  fare  better  with  the  Church 
of  England?  It  might  have  antiqidty  in  its  favour; 
but  was  not  the  true  apostolic  descent  in  the  main 
body?  The  pressure  of  this  argument  was  irresistible, 
if  the  true  and  only  church  be  an  external  institution 
with  certain  recognisable  notes  or  features.  Apostolical 
succession  is  an  outward  and  traceable  fact,  or  it  is 


1 1 6       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

nothlig  at  all.  It  cannot  belong  to  two  churches. 
If  sacramental  grace  be  the  exclusive  property  of 
an  external  order,  this  order  must  be  visible,  and  it 
must  also  be  exclusive.  It  must  be  in  the  Roman 
communion,  or  the  Anglican  communion,  or  the 
Presbyterian  communion;  it  cannot  be  in  all  three. 
To  Newman  it  had  existed  beyond  doubt  in  the 
Church  of  England,  because  this  church  was,  as  he 
and  his  friends  supposed,  '  Catholic'  in  England  in 
the  sense  of  displacing  all  others.  Romanism  had  no 
logical  footing  where  Catholicism  already  existed. 
So  long  as  one  can  hold  to  this  ground  the  position  is 
good.  But  then  of  course  the  converse  is  equally 
logical,  that  where  Catholicism  in  the  Roman  or 
Oriental  form  exists,  Anglicanism  has  no  footing. 
The  Roman  or  Oriental  form  may  be  corrupted,  but 
no  High  Churchman  can  doubt  that  they  represent 
the  true  Church  however  corrupted,  wherever  they 
prevail. 

Various  consequences  follow  inevitably  from  this 
doctrine.  If  Anglicanism  represent  the  Catholic 
Church  in  England,  it  must  speak  with  a  Catholic 
voice.  If  the  Church  of  England  be  in  England  that 
One  church  of  which  in  old  times  Athanasius  and 
Augustine  were  members — as  the  Church  of  Rome 
is  in  France  or  Spain — then  the  doctrine  must 
be  the  same.  The  Anglican  formularies  cannot  be 
at  variance  with  the  authoritative  teaching  of  the  old 
Church.  And  then  again,  wherever  the  Christian 
Church  exists  in  the  direct  or  original  line  of  descent, 
Anglicanism  and  still  less  Protestantism  can  have  no 
right  of  interference. 

Dr.  Newman's  via  media  was   destined    to   break 


Oxford  or  Anglo-CatJiolic  Movement.    1 1 7 

against  both  these  rocks.  The  39  Articles  were  the 
monument  of  Church  of  England  Protestantism. 
They  must  be  minimised ;  their  meaning  sophisti- 
cated ;  their  language  explained.  In  other  words, 
they  must  be  brought  into  accord  with  mediaeval 
doctrine,  against  which  in  many  points  they  were  a 
protest.  Hence  Tract  90,  which  at  length  brought 
the  series  to  an  end  in  the  explosion  which  it  caused. 
It  was  his  own  bishop  ^  who  said  that  in  this  Tract 
the  author  had  made  the  Articles  mean  mtything  or 
nothing.  The  words  cut  him  to  the  quick.  Nor  can 
an  impartial  judgment  say  that  they  were  too  strong. 
Both  Keble  and  Pusey,  as  well  as  the  author  him- 
self, have  indeed  written  in  defence  of  the  mode  of 
argument  employed  in  Tract  90.^  The  sum  of 
this  defence  may  be  said  to  be  that  Newman 
sought  to  give  the  '  literal  grammatical  sense '  of 
the  Articles,  apart  from  later  meanings  attributed  to 
them ;  and  that  this  principle  of  interpretation  had 
already  been  recognised  on  behalf  of  the  liberal 
Theologians,  and  in  the  common  saying  that  the 
Articles  'admitted  both  Arminians  and  Calvinists.' 
This  is  ingenious, but  nothing  more.  Because  Articles 
admit  of  a  certain  latitude  of  interpretation  which  all 
historical  statements  of  doctrine  must  do,  it  by  no 
means  follows  that  any  given  interpretation  of  them 

1  Dr.  Bagot,  of  whom  Dr.  Newman  speaks  highly  in  the  Apologia — 
'a man,'  he  says,  '  whom,  had  I  had  a  choice,  I  should  have  preferred  ' 
(as  his  ecclesiastical  superior)  '  to  any  other  bishop  on  the  bench,  and 
for  whose  memory  I  have  a  special  affection.' — P.  123. 

2  A  new  edition  of  Tract  90  was  issued,  with  '  a  historical  preface  '  by 
Dr.  Pusey,  in  1861.  Keble's  defence  is  embodied  in  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Justice  Coleridge,  privately  printed  in  1841,  and  afterwards  published 
along  with  the  new  edition  of  the  Tract. 


£  1 8       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

is  warrantable,  still  less  that  doctrines  against  which 
they  appear  to  every  unsophisticated  mind  to  have 
been  directed  are  not  really  condemned  in  them, 
but  something  quite  different — having  an  obscure 
relation  to  the  doctrines  in  question.  To  read  the 
Articles  themselves,  and  then  to  turn  to  Dr.  New- 
man's explanations,  is  a  painful  process  for  most 
minds,  even  minds  accustomed  to  theological  subtle- 
ties. And  this  of  itself  may  be  held  to  settle  the 
question. 

Four  tutors,  including  the  late  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, published  a  protest  against  the  Tract,  and  a 
formal  censure  was  passed  upon  it  by  the  heads  of 
Houses  a  few  days  later.  The  Tract  was  finally  with- 
drawn at  the  request  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford.  Then 
immediately  following,  and  while  all  the  pain  that 
arose  from  these  proceedings  was  still  sharp  in  his 
heart,  came  the  establishment  of  the  Jerusalem 
Bishopric.  As  the  Catholic  continuity  of  the  Church 
had  snapped  in  his  hands  on  the  side  of  doctrine,  so 
it  had  broken  as  well  on  the  historical  side.  The 
Jerusalem  Bishopric  was  not  only  an  invasion  of 
Catholicity,  but  an  invasion  which  carried  with  it 
(as  he  believed)  the  express  sanction  of  Lutheran 
and  Calvinist  heresy.  His  famous  protest  against  it 
bears  that  '  Lutheranism  and  Calvinism  are  heresies 
repugnant  to  Scripture  and  anathematised  by  east 
as  well  as  west.'  It  is  very  instructive  that  the 
Jerusalem  Bishopric — which  has  proved  practically 
of  no  consequence  in  the  Christian  world — should 
have  divided  enthusiastically  the  two  forces  of 
Liberalism  and  Anglo-Catholicism  now  running  with 
such    force    against   one   another.      To    Bunsen   and 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    1 19 

his  friends  the  bishopric  was  a  pet  project,  designed 
as  a  symbol  of  Christian  union  in  the  broadest  sense : 
to  Newman  and  his  friends  it  was  as  the  'abomination 
of  desolation,'  tending  to  the  *  disorganisation  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  the  denial  of  its  claim  to  be 
considered  a  branch  of  the  Catholic  Church.'  It  is 
hardly  possible  to  say  whether  the  hopes  of  the  one  or 
the  fears  of  the  other  have  been  more  completely 
falsified  by  the  event. 

It  was  now  evident  to  Newman's  own  mind  that 
his  place  of  leadership  in  the  Oxford  movement  was 
gone.  From  this  date — the  spring  of  1841 — he  says 
he  was  '  on  his  deathbed  '  as  regards  the  Church  of 
England.  He  formally  gave  up  his  place  in  the  move- 
ment, and  retired  to  Littlemore.  As  yet,  however, 
he  did  not  contemplate  leaving  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. Littlemore  was  his  Torres  Vedras  from  which 
again  he  thought  he  might  advance  within  the 
Anglican  Church.  There  were  still  points  as  in 
reference  to  the  '  honours  paid  to  the  Blessed  Virgin 
and  the  saints,'  on  which  he  differed  from  the  Church 
of  Rome.  It  is  unnecessary  for  us,  however,  to 
follow  the  '  history  of  his  religious  opinions '  further. 
Everybody  may  read  their  further  course  in  his  own 
interesting  narrative.  It  need  only  be  added  that  in 
the  autumn  of  1843  he  resigned  the  parochial  charge 
of  St.  Mary  at  Oxford  ;  that  by  the  end  of  1845  he  had 
become  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  that  in  the  beginning 
of  1846  he  left  Oxford  and  passed  formally  within 
the  pale  of  the  Roman  Church. 

The  retirement  of  Newman  from  the  scene  of 
action  virtually  closes  the  movement,  so  far  as  it  can 
be  embraced  within  this  course  of  Lectures.      Much, 


I20       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

however,  remains  to  be  described  in  a  full  history  of 
the  Modern  Anglo-Catholicism  ;  the  agitation  at  Ox- 
ford in  1844  and  1845  in  connection  with  Mr.  Ward's 
book  The  True  Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church;  the 
secession  of  Mr.  Ward,  Mr.  Oakley,  and  others  to  the 
Church  of  Rome  ;  Dr.  Pusey's  suspension,  and  then  his 
continued  labours  in  connection  with  the  movement ; 
the  rise  of  a  younger  Anglo-Catholic  party,  represented 
by  such  men  as  Samuel  Wilberforce,  Mr.  Gladstone, 
James  B.  Mozley,  Mr.,  now  Dean  Church,  and 
others.  Mr.  Gladstone's  once  well-known  volume  on 
The  State  in  its  Relations  with  tJie  Church  appeared 
in  1838;  and  his  book  on  Cliurch  Principles  in 
1840.  These  publications,  more  distinctly  perhaps 
than  any  others,  mark  the  rise  of  the  younger  An- 
glican school  to  which  Keble  warmly  attached  him- 
self, and  of  which  Pusey,  after  a  time  of  irresolution, 
became  again  the  animating  head.  It  is  only  justice 
to  this  school  to  say  that  it  has  been  from  the  first 
and  continues  to  be  genuinely  Anglican.  Whether 
its  avowed  principles  may  or  may  not  imply  the 
conclusions  to  which  Newman  felt  himself  irresistibly 
driven,  is  a  polemical  question  with  which  we  have  no 
need  to  meddle  here.  The  fact  is  that  the  school  of 
doctrine,  of  which  both  Samuel  Wilberforce  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  have  been  conspicuous  ornaments,  and  of 
which  the  late  Dr.  Mozley  (younger  brother  of  the 
author  of  the  Reminiscences)  was  the  chief  theologian, 
is  a  definite  product  of  Anglican  Christianity.  It  is 
native  to  the  Church  of  England ;  and  all  its  writers 
and  thinkers  have  a  stamp  which  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  John  Henry  Newman  ever  had.  His  Anglo- 
Catholicism   was  after  all  only  a  state   of  transition 


Oxford  or  Anglo-  Catholic  Movement.    1 2 1 

from  Evangelicalism,  or  something  like  Liberalism,  to 
Romanism.^     In  1826  he  was  drifting  in  the  direction 

1  There  is  an  interesting  paper  by  Dr.  Mozley  in  the  Christian 
Remembrancer,  January  1846,  on  Dr.  Newman's  secession,  in  which 
a  line  of  thought  as  to  Dr.  Newman's  relations  to  Anglo-Catholicism 
or  the  via  media  is  suggested  not  unlike  that  in  the  text.  Founding 
on  a  remarkable  passage  in  the  Introduction  to  Newman's  lectures  on 
Romaiiisni  and  Popular  Protestantism  to  the  following  effect : — '  Pro- 
testantism and  Popery  are  real  religions;  they  have  furnished  the 
mould  in  which  nations  have  been  cast ;  but  the  via  media  has  never 
existed  except  on  paper ;  it  has  never  been  reduced  to  practice  ; ' — 
Dr.  Mozley  observes  that  with  all  Newman's  great  power  as  a  preacher 
and  writer  within  the  Church  of  England,  it  seems  to  be  doubtful 
whether  he  ever  realised  himself  as  identified  with  its  life  and  work. 
'  He  did  not  energise  as  a  parish  priest,  but  as  an  author.  His  sermons 
were  addressed  to  a  University  audience.  He  had  weekly  com- 
munion and  daily  prayers,  and  he  had  the  church  at  Littlemore  with 
its  daily  duties.  But  all  this  was  a  thing  attached  to  his  great  posi- 
tion as  a  religious  mover,  and  not  that  position  to  it.  He  had  one 
line,  that  of  a  spreader  of  opinions ;  and  this  line,  however  appro- 
priate a  one,  was  still  one  which  kept  the  Church  distant,  as  it  were, 
to  his  mind,  and  did  not  bring  her  near  him..'  All  this  is  something 
like  saying  in  another  way  that  Dr.  Newman  had  never  breathed  the 
true  air  of  Anglo-Catholicism,  or  felt  himself  quite  at  home  in 
it.  It  was  always  to  him,  in  some  degree,  a  mere  '  book-religion  ' 
into  which  he  had  argued  himself,  and  out  of  which  he  again  argued 
himself.  No  one  could  know  Dr.  Newman — not  even  Hurrell  Froude 
— better  than  Dr.  Mozley,  who  was  not  only  his  pupil,  but  lived  on  terms 
of  the  closest  intimacy  with  him  from  1833  onwards  till  he  left  Oxford. 

Mozley  himself  would  make  an  interesting  study,  if  we  were 
able  to  treat  of  the  secondary  phenomena  of  the  Oxford  movement. 
He  is  a  very  different  man  from  his  brother — the  author  of  the 
Reminiscences — and  as  a  theologian  is  really  great,  although  some- 
what hard  and  polemical,  not  only  in  his  Bampton  Lectures,  but 
in  his  earlier  volume  on  Predestination  and  Original  Sin.  He  had 
a  good  deal  of  the  same  literary  power  as  his  brother — the  same 
facility  and  copiousness  of  pen;  but  in  his  earlier  essays  also  not 
a  little  of  the  same  literary  persiflage  and  intellectual  insolence. 
His  paper  on  Arnold,  one  of  his  earliest  (1844),  is  a  striking 
specimen  of  what  I  mean.  He  speaks  of  the  great  teacher  at  Rugby 
as 'a  man  who,   without   a  vestige  of  internal  scruple    or   m.isgiving, 


122       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  liberalism  ;^  in  1836 — certainly  in  1839 — he  was 
drifting  in  the  direction  of  Rome.  He  had  never 
imbibed,  as  Keble  and  the  Mozleys  and  others 
had  done,  the  pure  air  of  Anglicanism  as  a  distinct 
religious  life.  To  those  who  understand  this,  and 
how  much  more  vital  in  religion  as  in  other  things 
affinity  of  feeling  is  than  similarity  of  logical  prin- 
ciple, it  can  be  no  wonder  that  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr. 
Keble  remained  firm  in  their  adherence  to  the  Church 
of  England  while  Newman  left  it.  The  latter  says* 
of  Dr.  Pusey,  that  all  the  time  he  knew  him  he 
was  never  'in  his  reason  and  judgment'  near  to 
Rome.  On  the  contrary,  in  Newman  himself  there 
was  something  from  the  first  in  his  whole  mode  of 
thought  and  love  of  personal  rather  than  rational 
supremacy,  which  had  a  tinge  of  popery,^  and  which 
carried  him  irresistibly  forward,  although  by  slow 
degrees,  to  his  appointed  end. 

The  Oxford  movement  remains  a  great,  if  not  the 
very  greatest,  fact  in  the  recent  history  of  Anglican 
Christianity.  Its  principles  in  their  polemical  aspect 
suggest  many  further  thoughts  as  to  how  far  they 
are  capable  of  rational  vindication,  and  how  far  they 
shade  off  into  Romanism.      We  could  find  no  better 

unchristianised  the  whole  development  of  the  Christian-  Church 
from  the  days  of  the  Apostles,  who  made  the  very  friends  and  suc- 
cessors of  the  Apostles  teachers  of  conniption.'  .  .  .  Again,  he  says, 
•We  had  much  rather  not  think  him  as  a  religionist  at  all.'  J.  B. 
Mozley  was  a  very  young  theological  lion  when  he  roared  in  this  way, 
but  the  whole  article  is  a  bad  specimen  of  a  bad  school,  and  of  that 
strange  and  even  coarse  arrogance  which  is  sometimes  near  to  the 
best  gifts. 

'^Apologia,  p.  72.  ^Apologia,  p.  138. 

'  See  a  remarkable  passage  in  his  brother's  Phases  of  Faith,  refer. 
ring  to  as  early  a  period  as  1823-6,  p.  7.     9th  Ed. 


Oxford  or  Anglo- Catholic  Movement.    123 

text-book  for  such  a  discussion  than  Mr.  Gladstone's 
Church  Principles,  which  treats  in  succession  the 
great  Anglo-Cathohc  doctrines,  all,  according  to  him, 
more  or  less  involved  in  the  idea  of  the  church  as 
'  one,  holy,  catholic,  and  apostolic'  In  this  and  his 
earlier  volume  is  undoubtedly  preserved  much  of  the 
pith  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  thought.  I  doubt  if  any  one 
can  understand  the  deeper  impulses  of  a  mind  which 
has  been  and  continues  to  be  such  a  potent  factor  in 
our  modern  political  life,  who  has  not  studied  its 
workings  and  favourite  modes  of  conception  as 
embodied  in  these  books.  But  our  lectures  here  are 
designed  not  for  discussion  but  for  description ;  and  the 
general  character  of  the  movement  is  already  apparent 
in  all  that  we  have  said.  The  great  idea  of  the 
Church  in  its  visibility  and  authority — in  its  notes 
of  succession,  dogma,  and  sacrament, — sums  up  its 
meaning.  Many  will  dispute  the  very  possibility  of 
any  such  Church  or  embodiment  of  spiritual  power ; 
but  there  are  few  who  will  not  acknowledge  that 
the  Oxford  movement  has  done  more  than  all  other 
movements  in  our  time  to  revive  '  the  grandeur  and 
force  of  historical  communion  and  Church  life,'  and 
no  less  *  the  true  place  of  beauty  and  art  in  worship.' 
It  is  much  to  have  brought  home  to  the  hearts  of 
Christian  people  the  reality  of  a  great  spiritual  society 
extending  through  all  Christian  ages,  living  by  its 
own  truth  and  life,  having  its  own  laws,  and  rights, 
and  usages.  In  a  time  when  the  *  dissidence  of 
dissent,'  and  the  canker  of  sectarianism  have  spread 
to  the  very  heart  of  our  national  existence,  with  so 
many  unhappy  results,  the  idea  of  the  Church  as  a 
great  Unity — and  no  less  the  idea  of  Christian  art — 


124      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  the  necessity  of  order  and  beauty  in  Christian  wor- 
ship— are  ideas  to  be  thankful  for.  That  both  these 
ideas  are  capable,  as  history  proves,  of  rapid  abuse, 
unless  interpenetrated  by  the  light  of  reason,  and. 
used  with  purity  of  heart,  is  no  ground  for  rejecting 
either.  It  is  the  very  function  of  Christian  sense  to 
hold  the  balance  of  truth,  and  by  '  proving  all  things,' 
to  *  hold  fast  that  which  is  good.' 


IV. 

MOVEMENT  OF   RELIGIOUS   THOUGHT   IN 
SCOTLAND. 

A^/'E  have  seen  how  varied  and  full  of  interest  was 
the  movement  of  religious  thought  in  England 
during  the  third  decade  of  this  century.  What  was 
Scotland  doing  at  this  time  ?  She  had  not  only 
joined  in  the  intellectual  revival  of  the  century — but 
she  had  contributed  some  of  its  most  powerful  agents. 
In  1802  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh  Review 
was  published;  in  1805  Scott  began  his  career  as  a 
poet.  Of  all  the  names  that  adorn  the  opening  of 
our  century  Scott's  must  be  pronounced  upon  the 
whole  the  greatest — at  once  the  manliest  and  the 
most  original  and  creative.  He  may  rank  below 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  as  a  poet,  although  he 
is  great  in  poetic  qualities  as  old  as  Homer,  in 
which  both  are  entirely  wanting ;  but  take  him  all 
in  all  there  is  no  intellectual  figure  comparable  to 
him  in  breadth  and  richness.  He  strikes  the  new 
note  of  the  century — its  larger  intelligence  both 
for  nature  and  life — its  deeper  insight  into  the  past, 
as  well  as  its  freer,  fuller,  and  clearer  eye  for  the 
present,  with  a  wider,  a  more  extended  and  powerful 
sweep  than  any  other. 

Scotland  was  then  well  advanced  in  the  intellectual 

125 


126       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

race  which  opened  the  century.  Is  there  any  cor- 
responding movement  of  religious  thought  such  as 
followed  the  intellectual  revival  in  England,  and 
charged  it  with  a  deeper  life  ?  It  is  often  assumed 
that,  keen  as  the  intellectual  activity  of  Scotland  is, 
this  activity  has  not  extended  itself  to  theology. 
The  Calvinistic  creed  of  the  country  is  supposed 
to  have  remained  unshaken  under  all  its  mental 
progress.  There  is  a  certain  measure  of  truth  in  this  ; 
and  yet  it  is  really  a  superficial  judgment.  It  is 
true  that  Calvinism  remains  the  common  creed  of 
the  country,  and  that  the  Scottish  Churches  have 
not  been  disturbed  in  the  same  degree  as  the 
Church  of  England  by  divers  novelties  of  doctrine. 
But  it  is  far  from  true  that  Scotland  has  been 
quiescent  in  religious  thought.  It  has  not  moved 
with  the  same  bulk  or  mass  of  movement ;  in  the 
nature  of  things  this  was  impossible ;  but  it  has  con- 
tributed new  and  powerful  influences  to  the  onward 
current  of  religious  opinion  often  reaching  England 
— and  originating  there  new  impulses,  or  adding 
momentum  to  those  already  in  operation. 

In  the  very  same  decade  which  gave  to  England 
the  religious  philosophy  of  Coleridge  and  the  early 
Oriel  School,  Scotland  is  seen  full  of  religious  as 
well  as  intellectual  activity.  Carlyle  was  elaborating 
his  new  Gospel  of  Work ;  George  Combe  was  pro- 
pounding a  new  philosophy  of  life ;  and  Thomas 
Erskine,  Macleod  Campbell,  and  Edward  Irving 
were  all  supposed  to  be  assailing  the  old  theology 
of  the  country.  There  was  vehement  agitation,  both 
philosophical  and  religious.  Quick  as  was  the  pace 
of  thought  in  England  between  the  years   1820  and 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  127 

1830,  it  was  hardly  lers  so  in  Scotland.  Thomas 
Erskine  began  his  career  as  a  religious  writer  in 
1820;  and  the  more  his  writings  are  studied  the 
more  remarkable  will  be  found  to  have  been  their 
influence.  The  present  lecture  will  be  dev^oted  in 
the  main  to  trace  this  influence  and  what  is  known 
as  the  '  Row  heresy.'  Thomas  Carlyle  and  his  creed 
will  afterwards  claim  attention  in  a  separate  lecture. 
To  George  Combe  and  his  philosophy  we  can  only 
give  a  paragraph  as  we  pass  onwards. 

There  has  always  from  the  days  of  Hume  survived 
in  Scotland  a  vein  of  naturalistic  speculation.  Men 
like  Sir  John  Leslie  and  Thomas  Brown,  both  Pro- 
fessors in  Edinburgh,  may  be  pointed  to  as  represent- 
ing this  turn  of  mind  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  century. 
It  was  the  enemy  of  course  of  the  prevailing  theology; 
and  the  Church  had  signalised  its  opposition  to  it  on 
the  appointment  of  Leslie  to  the  Chair  of  Mathe- 
matics in  1805.  The  Edinburgh  Reviewers,  a  certain 
class  of  Intellectualists  in  the  capital,  were  more 
or  less  identified  with  the  naturalistic  spirit.  There 
was  always,  in  short,  a  fitting  soil  in  Edinburgh,  if 
nowhere  else,  for  the  culture  of  what  we  now  call 
Naturalism,  or  a  theory  of  life  and  duty  resting  on 
Nature,  rather  than  on  Revelation ;  and  George 
Combe  became  the  apostle  of  such  a  theory  in  the 
years  1825  and  1828.  In  the  former  year  appeared 
his  System  of  Phrenology}  and  at  the  later  date  his 
well-known  volume  on  The  Constitution  of  Man. 
The  Scotsman  newspaper,  then  in  the  first  phase  of 
its  intellectual  activity,  and  William  and  Robert 
Chambers,  both  exercising  even  then  a  well-established 

'  Originally  published  in  1819  as  Essays  on  Phrenology. 


128       Movements  of  Religiozis  Thought. 

influence  on  the  popular  literature  of  the  day,  were 
somewhat  in  the  same  line  of  thought.  There  was  no 
combination  or  definite  party,  but  many  shared  in  a 
movement  in  which  George  Combe  in  every  way 
deserves  the  pre-eminence.  He  was  a  man  of  spot- 
less character  and  the  most  sincere  enthusiasm,  com- 
bining an  earnest  Christian  theism  with  the  most 
unhesitating  belief  in  views  of  man's  constitution  and 
responsibility  which  seem  constantly  shading  off  into 
Materialism.  Many  of  his  special  dogmas  have 
vanished  with  the  progress  of  knowledge,  especially 
of  that  natural  knowledge  on  which  his  system  was 
based;  but  there  are  also  important  aspects  of  his 
teaching,  in  its  bearing  on  education,  which  survive, 
and  have  entered  with  enlightening  force  into  our 
modern  educational  theories.  Not  only  so.  But, 
imperfect  as  we  must  judge,  both  from  a  philoso- 
phical and  religious  point  of  view,  many  of  Combe's 
generalisations,  in  which  he  reposed  implicit  con- 
fidence, we  feel  that  there  Avas  a  healthy  element 
in  his  speculations.  They  were  as  a  salt  in  the 
intellectual  and  religious  atmosphere,  and  at  a  time 
when  there  was  much  to  harden  and  sometimes 
darken  religious  feeling,  they  helped  to  nourish  a 
broader  and  freer  opinion  not  without  its  beneficent 
bearing  on  religion. 

It  is,  however,  in  other  directions  that  we  must  look 
for  the  chief  influences  which  at  this  time  affected 
religious  opinion  in  Scotland.  Never,  perhaps  hardly 
even  in  our  own  time,  when  the  note  of  unsettle- 
ment  in  belief  is  so  common,  has  there  been  more 
excitement  and  novelty  in  Scottish  religion  than 
in  those  years.     The  pages  of  the  Christian  Instructor^ 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  129 

then  the  organ  of  EvangeHcalism  in  Scotland,  bear 
everywhere  testimony  to  this  state  of  things.  The 
age  is  spoken  of  as  one  of  '  modern  heresies,'  and  a 
single  volume  of  that  once  well-known  organ  in  1830 
recounts  no  fewer  than  three  allied  heretical  move- 
ments. 

It  is  strange  that  a  quiet  country  gentleman,  Mr. 
Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen,  should  have  been  the 
prominent  figure  in  these  movements,  and  that  his 
books,  now  hardly  remembered,  should  have  been  so 
widely  circulated  and  caused  so  much  alarm.  They 
were  not  merely  assailed  in  the  Christian  Instructor ; 
but  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  devoted  a  volume  of 
sermons  in  1830  to  their  refutation.  A  tract  or 
part  of  a  tract  in  the  Oxford  series  w^as  occupied 
with  an  elaborate  analysis  of  one  of  them  as  illustra- 
tive of  the  rationalistic  spirit  of  the  time.  On  the 
other  hand,  Mr.  Maurice  is  found  constantly  express- 
ing his  indebtedness  to  Mr.  Erskine's  books.  Of 
one  of  the  least  known  he  says,  '  It  has  been  unspeak- 
ably comfortable  to  me,'^  and  generally  he  testifies 
again  and  again  that  they  have  helped  him  much  in 
finding  an  answer  to  the  question,  '  What  a  Gospel 
to  mankind  must  be.' 

Of  Thomas  Erskine  we  might  say  much  as  a  man. 
It  was  our  privilege  to  enjoy  his  intimate  friendship 
during  the  closing  years  of  his  life,  when  he  was  a 
veteran  in  the  field  of  spiritual  experience  and  theo- 
logical thought,  while  we  were  only  looking  over  the 
field  with  raw  and  inexperienced  eyes.  As  the  life- 
long friend  of  Maurice  and  of  Carlyle — spirits  so 
apart, — he  was  naturally  regarded  by  younger  men, 

"^Life,  vol.  i.  p.  121. 
I 


130       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

who  knew  anything  of  his  beautiful,  Christian  nature, 
with  affectionate  feehngs  of  respect. 

It  was  impossible  to  know  him,  and  still  more  to 
come  near  him  in  religious  intercourse,  without  feel- 
ing one's-self  in  a  spiritual  presence  of  rare  delicacy 
and  power.  Religious  conversation  of  the  ordinary 
sort  is  proverbially  difficult.  It  is  but  too  seldom  a 
savour  of  life  unto  life,  being  apt  to  hide  as  much 
as  express  the  heart.  But  with  Mr.  Erskine  it  was  a 
natural  effluence.  It  came  from  him  as  the  expres- 
sion of  the  abiding  atmosphere  in  which  he  dwelt, 
and  if  one  may  have  shrunk  even  with  him  some- 
times from  the  awe  of  the  topics  on  which  he  dwelt, 
yet  his  deeply  meditative  words  were  seldom  with- 
out light.  They  lifted  the  soul  towards  Divine  mys- 
tery, even  when  they  failed  to  give  meaning  to  it. 
One  felt  the  deep  sincerity  of  the  man,  and  that  lie 
himself  had  laid  hold  of  the  Divine  in  his  own  heart 
whether  he  understood  it  rightly  or  not.  Like  his 
■friend  Maurice,  he  was  an  intense  Realist  in  religion. 
Abstract  theological  questions  had  little  interest 
for  him ;  religious  controversy  no  interest  whatever. 
Polemics  of  every  kind  he  disliked ;  and  he  was 
often  playful  over  their  folly.  I  remember  once  of 
his  saying  of  an  old  acquaintance,  whose  polemical 
faculty  much  outran  his  powers  of  insight  and  reason, 
'  He  is  a  great  reasoner ;  but  I  do  not  find  any  light  in 
him  at  all.  The  thing  itself  he  does  not  see,  but  he 
can  give  many  powerful  arguments  for  it.  The  School- 
men were  men  of  this  stamp — endless  writing  and 
argument,  but  no  light' 

His  own  nature,  as  may  be  supposed,  was  medi- 
tative, introspective,  quietly  brooding.      He  reached 


Religions  Thought  in  Scotland.  1 3 1 

the  truth,  or  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth, 
not  so  much  by  enlarging  his  knowledge,  or  by 
exercising  any  critical  and  argumentative  powers, 
as  by  patient  thoughtfulness  and  generalisation 
from  his  own  experience.  It  was  an  unhappy  con- 
junction that  pitted  him  against  Dr.  Andrew  Thom- 
son, or  rather  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  against  him. 
They  were  utterly  incapable  of  understanding  one 
another — Thomson  being  forensic,  argumentative,  sys- 
tematic, rhetorical  in  the  highest  degree,  and  Erskine 
the  very  opposite  of  all  this, — yet  with  depths  of 
spiritual  feeling  and  glimpses  of  insight  of  which 
Thomson  knew  nothing.  And  so  the  well-aimed 
shafts  of  the  latter  flew  over  his  opponent's  head  ; 
they  failed  of  their  mark  altogether.  It  was  of  no 
use  exposing  obscurities  or  inconsistencies  in  a  writer 
who  did  not  aim  to  be  systematic  or  to  argue  out  a 
thesis  so  much  as  to  tell  merely  what  he  himself  felt 
as  to  the  Gospel,  the  difficulties  of  its  acceptance  by 
many  minds,  and  the  higher  form  in  which  it  presented 
itself  to  his  own  spiritual  experience.  Dr.  Thomson's 
polemics,  it  must  be  confessed,  were  not  of  a  high 
order ;  occasionally  they  show  a  bad  spirit.  He  had 
noble  gifts,  we  know ;  there  was  a  fine  Christian 
manliness  in  his  character ;  but  there  was  also  a 
certain  coarseness  of  fibre,  and  he  does  not  shine  in 
encounter  with  Mr.  Erskine.  It  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  the  latter,  with  the  school  to  which  he  belonged, 
was  highly  provocative.  Never  retaliating,  they  yet 
looked  with  ineffable  pity  on  their  assailants  and  the 
countless  arguments  they  directed  against  them.  And 
there  is  nothing  perhaps  harder  to  bear  than  the  pity 
which  entrenches  itself  in  silence,  and  looks  down  as 


132       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

from  a  serener  height  on  the  wordy  warfare.  It  must 
be  said  also  that  while  Erskine  never  personally 
attacked  the  dogmas  of  the  Church,  he  yet,  in  all 
his  writings,  tended  quietly  to  subvert  them.  Ho 
spoke  with  disapproval  of  the  prevalent  religion 
taught  from  the  pulpits  and  received  by  the  people. 
This  was  a  trying  tone  for  men  like  Dr.  Andrew 
Thomson,  proud  of  the  popular  religion,  and  who, 
long  since  done  with  their  theological  education,  had 
no  idea  of  beginning  it  again  in  Mr.  Erskine's  school. 

As  for  himself,  Thomas  Erskine  was  never  all  his 
life  done  with  his  spiritual  education.  He  was  always 
learning,  and,  his  opponents  said,  '  never  coming  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  truth.'  He  had  no  belief  in 
finality  of  any  kind.  He  was  always  seeking  for 
more  light.  If  the  truth  had  been  offered  him  with 
the  one  hand,  and  the  pursuit  of  it  with  the  other,  he 
would  have  chosen,  with  Lessing,  the  chase  rather  than 
the  game.  '  If  we  only  could  have  an  infallible 
church — an  unerring  guide ! '  it  was  once  said  in  his 
hearing.  The  remark  raised  all  such  combative  energy 
as  he  had.  '  O  no  ! '  he  said,  '  such  a  thing,  if  it  could 
be,  would  destroy  all  God's  real  purpose  with  man, 
zvhich  is  to  educate  him,  and  to  make  him  feel  that  he 
is  being  educated — to  awaken  perception  in  the  man 
himself — a  growing  perception  of  what  is  true  and 
right,  which  is  of  the  very  essence  of  all  spiritual 
discipline.  Any  infallible  authority  would  destroy 
this,  and  so  take  away  the  meaning  of  a  church 
altogether.' 

These  few  traits  may  serve  to  give  some  image  of 
Mr.  Erskine.  They  are  but  feeble  strokes  of  little 
value  to  any  who  knew  him ;    but  they  are  charac- 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland. 


jj 


teristic.  He  lived  so  far  into  our  own  time,  and 
was  so  Avell  known  to  some  of  our  generation,  tliat 
we  are  apt  to  forget  how  far  back  his  activity  as 
a  writer  and  his  rehgious  influence  commenced.  He 
passed  for  the  Scottish  bar  in  1810,  and  in  his  early 
years,  as  indeed  through  life,  was  the  familiar  friend 
of  Jeffrey,  Cockburn,  and  Rutherford.  With  Leslie, 
the  well-known  mathematician,  he  also  lived  in  inti- 
macy, and  had  a  great  liking  for  him  and  many 
stories  of  his  eccentricities.  His  life-long  friendship 
with  Thomas  Carlyle  is  known  to  all ;  and  while 
many  characters  have  been  scorched  beneath  that 
dreadful  pen,  from  which  epithets  fell  like  cannon 
shot,  leaving  an  ineffaceable  impression,  there  is  no 
word  but  what  is  gentle  and  kind  of  his  friend  at 
Linlathen.  Carlyle,  indeed,  might  well  love  him, 
for  he  had  a  warm  place  always  in  Thomas  Erskine's 
heart,  who  mourned  for  his  unhappiness  as  if  he  had 
been  a  brother. 

Erskine's  first  book  appeared  in  1820,  and  in  the 
following  year  had  reached  a  third  edition.  It  was 
entitled  Remarks  on  the  Internal  Evidence  for  the 
Truth  of  Revealed  Religion.  This  work  is  not  only 
interesting  in  itself,  but  especially  interesting  as 
marking  a  crisis  in  his  own  history,  and  what  we 
may  call  a  crisis  in  the  theological  thought  of 
Scotland.  The  author  had  shared  in  the  prevalent 
scepticism  which  marked  the  period  of  his  youth 
and  the  Edinburgh  society  in  which  he  had  mingled. 
'  The  patient  study  of  the  gospel  narrative,'  he  says, 
'  and  of  its  place  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
the  perception  of  a  light  in  it  which  entirely  satisfied 
his  reason  and  conscience'  overcame    his    doubts  and 


134       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

left  him  in  the  assured  possession  of  divine  truth. 
The  death  of  his  brother,  whom  he  succeeded  in 
the  property  of  Linlathen,  deepened  his  rehgious 
impressions.  The  current  of  his  faith  swelled  strongly 
under  God's  dealing  with  him,  and  he  was  so  moved 
that  he  committed  his  thoughts  to  paper  with  a  view 
'  of  putting  them  into  the  hands  of  his  companions 
at  the  bar  when  he  parted  from  them.'  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  carried  out  this  intention,  but  the  paper 
he  then  composed  was  afterwards  used,  with  his 
sanction,  as  an  '  Introductory  Essay '  to  Samuel 
Rutherfurd's  Letters.^ 

Mr.  Erskine's  first  volume  is  in  some  respects 
his  most  characteristic.  It  is  mainly  the  result  of 
his  own  thought — as  all  his  books  were — but  it  may 
also  in  some  degree  have  been  suggested  by  a 
controversy  of  the  day.  Dr.  Chalmers  had  published, 
ten  years  before,  his  well-known  paper  on  Christianity 
in  the  Edinburgh  Encyclopcedia.  In  this  paper  he  had, 
with  the  first  fervour  of  his  new-born  faith,  denounced 
the  total  insufficiency  of  .natural  religion  to  judge  the 
contents  of  revelation  or  the  character  and  conduct 
of  God  as  given  in  revelation.  Reason  might  judge, 
he  argued,  of  the  validity  of  the  external  evidences  of 
Christianity,  but  '  its  intrinsic  merits  '  or  internal 
evidences  were  quite  beyond  the  competency  of  our 
natural  judgment.  If  the  authority  of  the  Christian 
revelation  is  once  established  on  the  ground  of  its 
historical  evidence,  it  is  not  our  business  to  scrutinise 
its  reasonableness*  but  'to  submit  our  minds  to  the  fair 
interpretation  of  Scripture.'  This  was  the  natural 
but  rash  conclusion  of  an  intense  and  absorbing 
^  Collins,  Glasgow,  1825. 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  135 

faith.  It  was  a  rash  conclusion  certainly — after- 
wards abandoned  by  Chalmers  himself — for  how  can 
the  divine  authorship  of  anything  be  known  apart 
from  its  character  ?  The  weakness  of  Dr.  Chalmers's 
position  was  well  exposed  in  an  acute  and  able 
volume  by  Dr.  Mearns  of  Aberdeen,  in  which  it  was 
shown  how  impossible  it  is  to  judge  of  the  divine 
origin  of  Christianity  apart  from  a  consideration  of  its 
real  nature,  both  as  revealing  the  character  of  God,  and 
as  bearing  on  the  character  of  man.  Religion  in  other 
words  must  prove  itself  reasonable,  worthy  of  God, 
and  fitted  to  do  good  to  man,  before  it  can  be 
accepted  as  divine.  Dr.  Mearns's  volume  was  pub- 
lished in  18 18. 

Erskine  can  hardly  fail  to  have  been  interested  in 
this  polemic,  touching  as  it  does  so  closely  the  line 
of  his  own  thought.  With  him  there  could  be  no 
question  as  to  the  necessary  connection  between  the 
Divine  origin  of  Christianity  and  its  Divine  character, 
nor  of"  the  competency  of  our  moral  instincts  to  judge 
this  character.  No  man  could  be  less  of  a  ration- 
alist in  the  obnoxious  sense  of  the  word.  He  was 
steeped  to  the  heart  in  the  essential  flavour  of 
Christian  truth.  But  all  divine  truth  must  find  its 
echo  within  himself — must  have  a  definite  rela- 
tion to  his  own  spiritual  experience,  and,  as  he 
believed,  to  all  Christian  experience.  In  this 
consisted  its  reasonableness.  A  religion  of  mere 
authority,  coming  to  man  from  the  outside  and  com- 
pelling faith  and  obedience,  was  unintelligible  to  him. 
It  was  not  even  of  the  nature  of  religion,  which  must 
be  always  self-evidencing,  showing  itself  by  its  own 
light ;    proving  itself  what  it  professes  to  be  by  the 


136       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

essential  relation  between  its  doctrines  and  the 
spiritual  elevation,  the  moral  culture  of  those  who 
receive  it.  '  The  reasonableness  of  a  religion,'  he 
says,  '  seems  to  me  to  consist  in  there  being  a  direct 
and  natural  connection  between  a  believing  of  the 
doctrines  which  it  inculcates,  and  a  being  form.ed  by 
these  to  the  character  which  it  recommends.  If  the 
belief  of  the  doctrines  has  no  tendency  to  train  a 
disciple  in  a  more  exact  and  more  willing  discharge 
of  its  moral  obligations,  there  is  evidently  a  very 
strong  probability  against  the  truth  of  that  religion. 
.  .  .  What  is  the  history  of  another  world  to  me, 
unless  it  have  some  intelligible  relation  to  my  duties 
or  happiness  ? ' ' 

All  this  is  simply  to  assert  that  religion,  to  be 
accepted  as  true,  must  be  real.  Its  doctrines  must 
be  of  such  a  nature  that  we  cannot  believe  them 
without  being  the  better  of  believing  them.  They 
are  self-evidencing  in  the  light  of  conscience.  They 
are  self-transforming  in  the  very  act  of  reception. 
This  seems  almost  a  truism,  and  yet  this  very 
passage  was  one  which  was  specially  quoted  to 
indicate  the  rationalistic  character  of  Erskine's 
teaching.^  It  was  pronounced  presumptuous  thus 
to  judge  of  Divine  Revelation.  Erskine's  great 
principle  that  the  object  of  Christianity  was  '  to  bring 
the  character  of  man  into  harmony  with  that  of  God,' 
was  supposed  to  minimise  Revelation,  to  make  man 
its  arbiter — as  if  we  could  judge  of  God's  works 
which  '  look  many  ways,'  and  have  '  objects  innumer- 
able.' But  surely  if  we  are  to  have  any  thoughts 
about  God   and    religion   at   all,  such    thoughts   are 

1  P.  58.  *  No.  73  of  the  Oxford  Tracts. 


Religious  Thoug Jit  i}i  Scotland.  137 

the  most  worthy  and  reverent  we  can  have.  There 
is  no  true  reverence  in  bowing  before  a  mere 
authority,  and  taking  for  truth  that  w^hich  has  neither 
hght  in  itself,  nor  seems  fitted  to  give  us  hght,  or  to 
make  us  Hke  to  God. 

Erskine  no  doubt  in  his  first  book,  as  in  all  his 
books,  and  in  the  uniform  strain  of  his  thought,  was 
inclined  to  dwell  somewhat  exclusively  on  the  inta'- 
nal  aspect  of  Religion.  Religion  was  so  great  a 
reality  to  him,  that  he  never  dissociated  it  from  its 
bearing  on  human  character.  He  could  barely 
imagine  it  in  mere  conventional  or  historical  forms — 
as  a  formal  revelation,  or  an  external  institution. 
By  his  own  pure  thinking, — out  of  the  workings  of  his 
own  heart, — he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  got  beyond 
such  critical  questions  as  the  veracity  of  the  evan- 
gelical narratives  and  other  historical  difficulties, 
which  in  his  earlier  life  had  perplexed  him.  He 
had  cut  his  way  out  of  these  difficulties,  rather  than 
solved  them  by  patient  and  adequate  inquiry.  He 
had  said  to  himself  as  many  others  have  done,  I 
cannot  reach  any  clear  settlement  of  such  ques- 
tions ;  they  are  far  too  intricate  and  involve  too 
many  probabilities  to  be  determined  by  me — perhaps 
to  be  determined  by  any  one.  He  had  none  of  the 
logical  confidence  of  the  old  school  of  Paley,  to 
whom  the  external  evidences  of  Christianity  pre- 
sented themselves  as  a  problem  to  be  solved  in  a 
series  of  propositions,  which  they  believed  themselves 
to  have  satisfactorily  proved.  Even  Chalmers,  with 
all  the  splendour  of  his  natural  powers,  was  in  the 
main  a  man  of  an  eighteenth  century  turn  of  mind, 
who  put  the  apostles — as  witnesses  of  the  Christian 


138       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

miracles — into  court,  so  to  speak  ;  and,  after  interro- 
gation, summed  up  in  their  favour.  Erskine's  intel- 
lectual mood  was  quite  different  He  had  no  argu- 
mentative or  historical  turn.  His  genius  was  purely 
spiritual.  If  he  was  to  receive  Christianity  at  all, 
therefore,  it  must  come  to  him  as  an  internal  light, 
flooding  his  soul — conditioning  his  whole  life.  He 
saw  that  men  believed  in  'external  evidences,'  and 
were  attached  to  the  Church  as  an  institution, 
without  being  any  better  men,  or  being  inspired  by 
A  divine  spirit.  But  Christianity  must  be  all  or 
nothing  to  him.  He  must  see  it  as  a  divine  truth. 
'  I  must  discern,'  he  said,  '  in  the  history  itself,  a  light 
and  truth  which  will  meet  the  demands  both  of  my 
reason  and  conscience.  In  fact,  however  true  the 
history  may  be,  it  cannot  be  of  any  moral  and 
spiritual  benefit  to  me,  until  I  apprehend  its  truth 
and  meaning.  This,  and  nothing  less  than  this,  is 
what  I  require,  not  only  in  this  great  concern,  but 
in  all  others.' 

Erskine,  in  short,  without  any  indebtedness  either 
to  Schleiermacher  or  Coleridge,  and  almost  as  early 
as  either,  was  in  Scotland  an  apostle  of  the  '  Chris- 
tian consciousness.'  He  led  in  the  great  reaction 
against  mere  formal  orthodoxy,  and,  for  that  part  of 
the  matter,  formal  rationalism,  which  set  in  with  the 
opening  of  the  third  decade  of  the  century.  Those 
who  called  him  a  rationalist  judged  him  from  a  wrong 
point  of  view.  He  was  rational  certainly  in  compari- 
son with  all  who  saw  in  Christianity  a  body  of  mere 
formal  doctrines  or  observances,  to  be  accepted  on 
authority.  But  he  was  the  very  opposite  of  rational- 
istic in  the  sense  in  which  rationalism  had  prevailed 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotla7id.  139 

in  Germany  and  England  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
This  bastard  form  of  reason  had  cut  the  heart  out 
of  all  religion  and  reduced  it  to  a  caput  mortiiwn. 
Erskine's  religion  was  all  heart.  He  did  not  under- 
stand religion  without  the  living  fire  of  faith  and 
love  and  obedience  animating  it  all  through.  It 
must  be  a  light  in  his  reason,  a  guide  in  his  con- 
science— a  life  within  his  life, — a  spiritual  power 
glowing  in  his  whole  conduct.  This  was  '  internal 
evidence,' — the  revelation  of  Love  to  love,  of  Life  to 
life, — of  God  to  man,  raising  him  to  divine  communion, 
and  reflecting  upon  him  the  divine  likeness.  *  The 
first  faint  outline  of  Christianity,'  he  says,  '  presents 
to  us  a  view  of  God  operating  on  the  character  of 
men  through  a  manifestation  of  His  own  character, 
in  order  that,  by  leading  them  to  participate  in  some 
measure  in  His  moral  likeness,  they  may  also  in  some 
measure  participate  in  His  happiness.' 

The  same  subjective  tendency  pervades  all  his 
special  views  of  Christian  doctrine.  As  with  Cole- 
ridge, for  example,  the  abstract  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
had  little  interest  for  him.  He  recognised  it  indeed 
as  speculatively  true — as  the  necessary  outcome  of 
real  thought  on  the  subject  of  God.  I  heard  him 
in  later  years  discourse  much  on  this  subject,  and 
endeavour  to  explain  how  the  very  idea  of  God  as 
Love  implied  an  object  of  love  or  divine  Son  from  the 
beginning,  and  no  less  a  divine  Spirit.  But  so  far  the 
doctrine  lay  to  him  in  obscurity.  It  was  only  in  the 
light  of  redemption  that  it  planted  itself  as  a  living 
truth  in  his  Christian  intelligence.  '  The  obscurity  of 
the  doctrine  vanishes,'  he  says,  '  when  it  comes  in 
such  a  form  as  this,  "God  so  loved  the  world,  that  he 


140       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

gave  his  only  begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  beheveth  in 
him  should  have  eternal  life."  '  Again,  while  speaking 
of  the  dogma,  in  its  article  or  creed  form,  as  pre- 
senting difficulties  to  the  mind — as  being  in  fact  of 
such  an  'unintelligible  nature'  as  to  suggest  the 
idea  '  that  Christianity  holds  out  a  premium  for 
believing  improbabilities  ' — he  thinks  that  when  taken 
in  its  Biblical  connection, — as  all  doctrines  should 
be  taken, — it  becomes  an  illuminating  belief  In  his 
own  language — '  it  stands  indissolubly  united  with 
an  act  of  divine  holiness  and  compassion  which 
radiates  to  the  heart  an  appeal  of  tenderness  most 
intelligible  in  its  nature  and  object,  and  most  con- 
straining in  its  influence.' 

But  Mr.  Erskine's  teaching  gradually  assumed  a 
more  definite  and  significant  form.  He  passed  from 
consideration  of  the  general  character  and  evidence 
of  religion  to  that  of  the  essential  character  of  the 
Gospel  as  a  Revelation  of  Divine  Love.  It  was  his 
later  rather  than  his  earlier  teaching  that  may  be 
said  to  have  formed  a  school  of  which  Maurice  was  an 
offshoot  and  of  which  Dr.  Macleod  Campbell  became 
the  chief  theological  representative  in  Scotland. 

This  more  essential  Christian  teaching  was  em- 
bodied in  a  series  of  volumes,^  but  especially  in  a 
volume  on  TJie  Unconditional  Frceness  of  the  Gospel, 
prepared  by  Mr.  Erskine  while  on  the  Continent  in 
1827,  and  published  on  his  return  early  in  1828. 
In  this  volume  he  explained  how  the  current  theolo- 

*  (1.)  An  Essay  on  Faith,  1822. 
(2.)   The  Unconditional  Freeness  of  the  Gospel,  1 828. 
(3.)   The  Brazen  Serpejit,  183I. 
(4.)  The  Doctrine  of  Election,  1837. 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  1 4 1 

gical  terms  such  as  Pardon,  Salvation,  Eternal  Life, 
were,  as  he  supposed,  misinterpreted.  Pardon  was 
conceived  as  offered  now  to  every  sinner  on  con- 
dition of  faith,  Salvation  as  equivalent  to  justifi- 
cation by  faith,  and  Eternal  Life  as  a  life  in  the 
future,  locally  represented  under  the  name  of  heaven. 
According  to  him  Pardon  was  already  made  for 
every  sinner  in  the  mission  and  death  of  Christ. 
'  The  pardon  of  the  gospel,'  in  his  own  words,  '  is 
in  effect  a  declaration  on  the  part  of  God  to  every 
individual  sinner  in  the  whole  world  that  his  holy 
compassion  embraces  him,  and  the  blood  of  Jesus 
Christ  has  atoned  for  his  sins.'  Salvation,  again,  is 
*  the  healing  of  the  spiritual  diseases  of  the  soul,'  and 
Eternal  Life  '  the  communication  of  the  life  of  God 
to  the  soul'  Heaven  is  not  necessarily  associated 
with  the  idea  of  locality,  but  is  'properly  the  name 
for  a  state  conformed  to  the  will  of  God,'  and  hell 
the  opposite  of  that  state. 

It  is  easy  to  see  in  all  this  the  operation  of  the 
same  subjective  tendency — his  desire  to  translate  the 
gospel  out  of  the  formal  conceptions  in  which  it  had 
become  systematised  in  the  doctrines  of  the  West- 
minster Assembly,  into  experience  and  life.^  These 
doctrines  appeared  to  him  to  limit  the  gospel  and 
keep  it  aloof  from  man  till  applied  to  him  by  the 
twofold  act  of  divine  election  and  justifying  faith. 
On  the  contrary,  he  held  that  it  is  already  the  por- 

1  In  one  of  his  letters,  Nov.  1833,  addressed  to  Lady  Elgin,  he  says 
in  words  exactly  agreeing  with  those  in  the  text,  '  I  believe  all  notions 
of  Religion  [the  italics  are  his  own],  however  true,  to  be  absolutely 
useless  or  worse  than  useless.'  Christ  '  is  far  above  all  doctrines  about 
Him,  however  true.  He  is  the  truth.  A  doctrine  that  can  be  separated 
from  Himself  is  a  vanity  and  deception.' 


142       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

tion  of  every  sinner.  '  Christ,'  as  he  said,  '  is  laid 
down  at  every  door.'  '  Salvation  by  faith  does  not 
mean  that  mankind  are  pardoned  on  account  of 
their  faith  or  by  their  faith.  No,  its  meaning  is  far 
different.  It  means  that  they  are  pardoned  already 
before  they  thought  of  it,'  and  that  they  have  only  io 
realise  what  is  already  theirs  to  enjoy  all  the  blessings 
of  salvation.  Pardon,  in  other  words,  is  universal. 
The  gospel  is  a  great  scheme  of  universal  restoration 
through  Christ,  which  meets  and  remedies  all  the 
loss  of  the  Fall.  Men  no  longer  need  forgiveness, 
for  they  already  have  forgiveness  in  Christ.  What 
they  need  is  a  consciousness  of  this — a  subjective 
experience  of  the  objective  divine  fact  accomplished 
for  them  in  Christ.  Through  God's  great  mercy,  if 
they  only  knew  it,  pardon  is  theirs  already. 

All  who  are  familiar  with  the  theology  of  Mr. 
Maurice,  in  his  books  and  in  his  remarkable  letters 
recently  published,  will  find  there  the  expanded  echo 
of  this  teaching.  Mr.  Maurice  himself  frankly  owns 
this  (1852)  in  dedicating  one  of  his  volumes^  to  Mr. 
Erskine.  The  general  character  of  this  theology 
therefore  will  again  come  before  us,  and  we  need 
only  now  fix  its  place  in  the  development  of  Mr. 
Erskine's  thought. 

His  volumes  on  TJie  Unconditional  Freeness  of  the 
Gospel,  2l\\6.  The  Brazen  Serpent  (183 1),  may  be  said 
to  sum  up  his  teaching.  He  continued  to  publish, 
but  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  added  anything  further 
to  the  characteristics  of  his  religious  thought.  The 
Brazen  Serpent  is  the  most  theological  of  his  writings, 
and  particularly  attracted  Mr.  Maurice,  but  it  did  not 
^  The  Prophels  and  Kings  of  the  Old  Testament,  1852. 


Religious  Tho2ight  in  Scotland.  1 43 

reach  the  same  circulation  as  his  preceding  treatises.^ 
It  contains  in  germ  much  of  the  same  thinking  which 
afterwards,  in  the  more  powerful  reflective  mind  of 
Dr.  Macleod  Campbell,  expanded  into  his  well-known 
treatise  on  The  Nature  of  the  Atonement. 

Whatever  we  may  think  of  Mr.  Erskine's  views, 
and  we  are  in  a  far  better  position  now  to  judge  of 
their  merits  and  defects  than  his  own  generation  was, 
there  can  hardly  be  any  question  of  their  variance 
with  the  popular  theology  of  Scotland.  Dr.  Chalmers 
is  said^  to  have  cordially  approved  of  'the  leading 
principles  of  his  essay  on  The  Freeness  of  the  Gospel,' 
though  dissenting  from  '  one  of  its  positions,'  and  to 
have  expressed  over  and  over  again  to  his  friends 
his  pleasure  in  the  volume  as  one  of  '  the  most 
delightful  books  that  ever  had  been  written.'  There 
was  a  large-heartedness  in  Chalmers  that  responded 
to  its  free  and  generous  views,  and  in  that  and 
some  other  matters  he  did  not  care  for  logical 
consistency.  But  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  was  the 
truer  interpreter  of  the  mind  of  Scotland  as  well  as 
of  the .  differences  between  the  new  and  the  old 
theology.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  the  spirit  of 
many  of  his  criticisms,  he  saw  clearly,  and  with  logical 
acumen,  within  his  own  sphere  of  vision,  and  there  is 
an  argumentative  as  well  as  vindictive  force  in  some 
of  his  replies.  What  is  most  remarkable  to  a  student 
now-a-days  in  both  is  the  lack  of  historical  know- 
ledge in  dealing  with  Christian  dogma.     Mr.  Erskine 

1  All  Mr.  Erskine's  first  books,  On  the  Internal  Evidence  for  the 
Truth  of  Revealed  Religion  (1820),  his  Essay  on  Faith  (1822),  and  The 
Unconditional  Freeness  of  the  Gospel,  went  through  many  editions, 
were  translated  into  French,  and  the  first  also  into  German. 

*  Dr.  Hanna's  edition  of  Mr.  Erskine's  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  127. 


1 44       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

is  perhaps  more  deficient  in  this  respect  than  his 
opponent.  He  has  no  consciousness  of  the  real  rela- 
tion of  his  views  to  the  older  theology,  or  again  to 
Arminianism,  or  again  how  far  he  was  merely  reviving 
or  bringing  forth  anew,  aspects  of  ancient  doctrine. 
He  was  consequently  astonished  at  the  condemnation 
which  his  book  called  forth.  A  larger  acquaintance 
with  the  history  of  theological  opinion  would  have 
enabled  him  to  see  that  a  good  deal  of  his  distinc- 
tive teaching  was  not  new  in  the  thought  of  the 
Church,  and  on  the  other  hand  that  it  touched  so  very 
different  a  pole  of  thought  from  that  of  the  theology 
of  the  Westminster  Divines,  that  it  was  sure  to  evoke 
violent  offence  and  discussion. 

His  mind  was  at  once  questioning  and  meditative 
— but  he  had  never  been  a  student  of  theology  in  any 
scientific  sense,  nor  indeed  in  any  large  traditionary 
sense.  So  it  was  that  the  result  of  his  own  meditation 
upon  Scripture  came  to  him  with  a  surprised  delight, 
and  seemed  a  Gospel  unknown  before,  or  at  least 
unknown  in  Scotland.  Constantly  in  his  letters  he  de- 
plores the  darkness  of  the  general  Christian  teaching ; 
and  there  was  ground  for  much  that  he  says ;  but  it 
was  also  true  that  the  universal  aspect  of  the  Gospel 
had  never  been  lost  sight  of  in  the  Scottish  Church  in 
its  most  Calvinistic  moods.  No  Calvinist,  however 
rigidly  he  clung  to  his  system,  would  have  allowed 
that  he  limited  the  offer  of  Divine  Love  in  the 
Gospel,  or  that  any  who  chose  to  accept  the  offer 
was    excluded    from    the    pale    of    salvation.^      Here, 

^  It  must  be  conceded  that  Mr.  Erskine  at  times  somewhat  wilfully 
misinteiprets  the  current  Theology,  as  in  saying  that  it  held  that  man 
is  justified  '  on  account  of  his  faith  or  by  his  faith,'  whereas  it  is  a  well- 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  1 45 

as  everywhere,  we  are  noting  facts,  and  not  dealing 
with  theological  difficulties  or  refinements.  And  it 
admits  of  no  question  that  Scottish  theologians,  from 
Knox  and  Samuel  Rutherford  to  Chalmers,  have 
ever  enforced  with  pathetic  power  the  claim  of  the 
Divine  Love  upon  sinners.  Their  technical  theology 
may  seem  to  have  been  inconsistent  with  this ;  it  was 
so  in  Mr.  Erskine's  eyes ;  but  no  technical  theology 
can  alter  facts,  nor,  indeed,  resist  the  impulses  of 
Divine  affection  in  Christian  hearts.  There  were 
many,  therefore,  in  Mr.  Erskine's  day,  who,  while 
refusing  to  accept  his  w^ay  of  putting  the  matter,  or 
the  form  of  the  Gospel  as  set  forth  by  him,  would  yet 
have  maintained  that  they  held  all  that  was  true  and 
scriptural  in  his  teaching. 

It  is  melancholy,  indeed,  to  reflect  how  at  this  cri- 
tical period  in  the  history  of  the  Scottish  Church,  as 
in  similar  periods  of  Church  history,  men — on  both 
sides — became  excited  over  modes  of  language,  and 
sought  to  emphasise  the  difference  rather  than  the 
identity  of  their  Christian  conceptions.  This  is  suf- 
ficiently conspicuous  in  the  polemic  which  gathered 
around  Mr.  Erskine  and  his  books  ;  but  it  is  still  more 
evident,  as  it  had  far  more  serious  consequences,  in 
the  new  phase  of  the  movement  which  meets  us  on 
the  shores  of  the  Gareloch,  and  in  which  Mr.  Macleod 
Campbell  was  the  chief  figure. 

Mr.  Campbell  was  settled  in  the  parish  of  Row, 
lying  on  the  Dumbarton  shore  of  the  beautiful  Gare- 
loch, in  1825 — the  year,  it  will  be  remembered,  in 
which  the  Aids  to  Reflection  saw  the  light.     He  had 

known  commonplace  of  Calvinism  that  faith  is  in  no  sense  the  operative^ 

but  only  the  instriunental  cause  of  salvation. 

K 


146      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

grown  up,  if  possible,  in  a  still  more  sequestered 
parish,  Kilninver,  where  his  father  had  ministered  for 
a  lifetime,  and  where  the  savour  of  his  honoured  name 
still  lingers.  After  a  career  of  promise  at  Glasgow 
College,  and  a  year's  study  in  Edinburgh,  1821-2.  he 
spent  the  intervening  time  before  he  settled  at  Row 
in  reading  and  further  study,  chiefly  of  a  philosophic 
kind.  His  father's  sympathies  were  in  the  main  with 
the  *  Moderate '  party.  He  delighted  in  the  study 
of  Tillotson  and  Samuel  Clarke.  Young  Campbell 
therefore  did  not  imbibe  any  hyper-Evangelical  doc- 
trine in  his  youth,  and  yet  there  was  in  him  from  the 
first  such  a  tendency.  It  was  always  the  fear  of  his 
old  tutor  that  he  would  become  'too  high.'  His  early 
ministry  was  one  of  simple  faith  and  conviction.  He 
kept  aloof  from  parties  in  the  Church,  and  gave 
himself  to  his  duties  with  untiring  devotion.  Never 
was  Christian  minister  more  divinely  called.  He  was 
born  to  preach  the  Gospel,  and  to  counsel  and  guide 
others  in  the  Divine  life.  He  had  the  true  Apostolical 
succession,  if  ever  man  had,  and,  what  he  had,  he  re- 
tained. The  same  Divine  unction  lay  upon  all  his 
words,  and  the  same  blessing  followed  him  wherever 
he  went.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  ministry  more 
divinely  consecrated  and  sustained,  and  yet  more  in 
the  face  of  all  Church  theory.  He  was  as  plainly 
'called  to  be  a  minister  of  Jesus  Christ  through  the 
will  of  God,'  as  any  Apostle  ever  was,  and  his  divine 
calling  remained  independent  of  any  ecclesiastical 
sanction,  and  even  grew  richer  in  his  isolation.  The 
fact  is  beyond  question,  whatever  our  theories  may 
make  of  it. 

Difficulties  soon  arose  in  the  course  of  a  ministry 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  147 

so  earnest  and  personal  as  Mr.  Campbell's.  As  he 
studied  the  Scriptures  diligently,  and  visited  his  people 
constantly,  he  became  impressed  with  the  lack  of  vital 
piety.  He  found  many  interested  in  religion,  but 
few  living  holy  lives.  The  higher  the  standard  he  set 
before  his  people  the  less  did  they  seem  to  reach,  in 
his  opinion,  a  true  standard  at  all.  He  pondered  the 
cause  of  this,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
because  they  did  not  feel  sure  of  God's  goodwill  to 
them  as  individuals.  They  required  to  be  taught  the 
very  first  step  in  religion,  the  being  '  assured  of  the 
Divine  love  in  Christ.'  Hence  his  '  doctrine  of  the 
assurance  of  faith,'  by  which  he  seemed  at  first  at 
least  to  mean  the  assurance  of  an  objective  fact — the 
Divine  Father's  love — rather  than  of  a  subjective  state, 
— as  if  a  man  could  never  fall  from  grace.  But  here 
in  the  nature  of  his  language  the  first  opening  was 
given  for  heretical  charge  against  him.  Then  came 
the  further  thought.  How  can  any  man  in  particular 
know  that  God  loves  him  unless  Christ  has  died  for 
all, — unless  the  Gospel  be  a  '  Gospel '  or  divine  gift  to 
every  human  being  ?  Otherwise  he  thought  '  there 
was  no  foundation  in  the  Record  of  God  for  the 
assurance  which  he  demanded,  and  which  he  saw 
to  be  essential  to  true  holiness.'  Hence  his  further 
doctrine  of  Universal  Atonement. 

He  described,  not  without  a  touch  of  unconscious 
humour,  how  those  who  had  been  most  satisfied  with 
his  teaching  on  the  subject  of  Assurance  were  parti- 
cularly displeased  with  his  teaching  as  to  the  Univer- 
sality of  the  Atonement.  It  seemed  to  them  that  if 
Christ  died  for  all,  then  the  individual  Christian  was 
deprived  of  assurance  in  his  own  case.     Others,  again, 


148       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

who  had  been  offended  by  his  preaching  Assurance, 
were  still  more  offended  by  his  combining  with  this 
doctrine  that  of  universal  pardon. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  was  much  con- 
fusion both  of  thought  and  language  lying  at  the 
foundation  of  what  is  known  as  the  Row  heresy.  In 
a  certain  respect  Mr.  Campbell's  teaching  was  beyond 
challenge.  That  God  loves  every  creature  that  He 
has  made,  that  Christ  died  for  all  men,  are  common- 
places of  Christian  theology — but  not  so  the  doctrine 
that  '  assurance  is  of  the  essence  of  faith '  or  that 
all  men  are  pardoned  in  the  sense  of  being  saved. 
Preacher  and  accusers  misunderstood  one  another, 
and  the  longer  they  argued  they  misunderstood  the 
more.  It  would  be  wrong  to  lay  all  the  blame  of 
this  upon  the  accusers.  Mr,  Campbell  was  not  only 
fond  of  his  own  phrases,  but  he  had  that  tendency 
common  to  the  dogmatic  mind  to  take  his  phrases 
for  an  essential  part  of  Divine  truth.  In  1829,  when 
the  agitation  against  his  teaching  was  reaching 
its  height,  he  makes  the  remarkable  confession,  '  I 
know  that  I  might  preach  the  truth  without  challenge 
if  I  avoided  two  things ;  innovations  of  language 
such  as  saying  that  all  are  pardoned ;  and  personal 
interrogations,  such  as,  '  Are  you  born  again  ?  '  '  Do 
you  know  yourself  to  be  a  child  of  God  ? '  But  these 
modes  of  speech  were  necessary,  he  imagined,  to  the 
expression  of  his  own  thought.  What  he  meant  was 
that  all  are  pardoned  in  the  amplitude  of  the  Divine 
love,  and  if  they  would  only  realise  it  all  are  already 
by  the  act  of  God  Himself  His  own  children ;  but  he 
was  supposed  to  mean  that  all  are  already  saved  and 
the  children  of  God,  whether  they  realised  it  or  not, 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  1 49 

whether  they  Uved  as  the  children  of  God  or  not. 
He  was  speaking  of  the  ideal  in  Christ — the  Church 
redeemed  and  sanctified  in  Him.  Others  were 
thinking  of  men  and  women  as  they  generally  are, 
unconscious  of  their  Divine  privileges.  The  asser- 
tion that  all  were  pardoned  was  translated  into  the 
notion  of  salvation  without  regard  to  morality,  or  even 
any  consciousness  of  true  religion  ;  and  did  not  Anti- 
nomianism  therefore  hang  on  the  skirts  of  such 
preaching?  Nothing  could  have  been  further  from 
Mr.  Campbell's  thoughts.  It  was  the  very  intensity 
of  his  desire  for  holy  living  among  his  people  that 
made  him  dwell  upon  the  assured  love  of  God  to 
them  as  the  true  and  only  root  of  such  holy  living. 
It  was  his  craving  after  the  very  life  of  God  in  himself 
and  others  which  made  him  so  emphasise  the  love  of 
God  to  sinners.  But  there  was  none  the  less  a  certain 
danger  in  his  modes  of  speech,  especially  when  taken 
up  and  translated  by  minds  with  none  of  his  spiritual 
insight.  Like  his  friend  Erskine,  he  saw  not  only  to 
the  heart  of  the  Gospel,  but  he  saw  it  always  as  an 
ideal  whole — faith,  hope,  charity,  love,  light,  holiness, 
all  blended  in  one.  His  conception  of  the  Divine 
was  essentially  concrete.  His  assurance  of  the  Divine 
Love  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins  already  contained  in 
it  the  whole  idea  of  salvation.  But  the  common 
theological  intelligence  has  abstracted  and  divided 
the  several  parts  of  the  Divine  life.  It  does  not 
hold  pardon  and  holiness,  love  and  law,  assurance 
and  conduct,  together  in  their  necessary  nexus  as 
he  did.  And  to  this  state  of  mind  '  universal  pardon  ' 
is  indiscriminate  salvation. 

The  case  was  one  for  forbearance  and  conference. 


150       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Unhappily  it  developed  rapidly  into  prosecution. 
There  had  been  growing  offence  at  Mr,  Campbell's 
preaching.  He  had  become  marked  along  with  Mr. 
Erskine  as  the  centre  of  a  new  school  of  thought 
within  the  Church.  The  latter  had  heard  him  preach 
in  Edinburgh  apparently  in  the  spring  of  1828. 
Returning  from  church  he  said  with  emphasis,  '  I  have 
heard  to-day  from  that  pulpit  what  I  believe  to  be 
the  true  Gospel.'  The  .same  summer  found  Mr. 
Erskine  at  Row  united  in  a  close  and  warm  friend- 
ship with  the  pastor.  Others  joined  the  brotherhood 
sooner  or  later.  Mr.  Story,  minister  of  Roseneath, 
across  the  Gareloch ;  Mr.  Scott,  afterwards  well 
known  as  Principal  of  Owens  College,  Manchester; 
Edward  Irving,  and  others  less  prominent.  They 
became  credited  with  an  attempt  to  upset  the  old 
Calvinistic  doctrine.  The  idea  of  some  such  combi- 
nation undoubtedly  possessed  the  minds  of  many, 
and  may  be  held  so  far  to  explain  the  sad  series  of , 
events  which  followed. 

It  is  needless  to  pass  any  harsh  judgment  now  on 
what  took  place,  nor  is  this  the  place  to  describe  the 
sequel  at  length.  But  it  must  ever  remain  a  matter 
of  regret  that  the  Church  did  not  weigh  more  deli- 
berately her  line  of  action,  and  realise  more  solemnly 
all  its  meaning.  No  Church  was  ever  more  blessed 
than  the  Church  of  Scotland  then  was  in  these 
men  of  Christian  genius  whom  she  rashly  cast 
from  her  bosom.  They  were  all  men  of  truly  pro- 
phetic spirit,  and  who  knows  what  healing  might 
have  come  to  Irving's  great  but  perturbed  mind  if  he 
had  been  tenderly  cared  for  and  sheltered  within  the 
Church  of  his  Fathers  instead  of  being  rudely  pushed 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.         151 

outside  of  it!  It  was  a  favourite  topic  with  Mr. 
Erskine  in  after  years — the  great  wrong  which  the 
Church  had  done  to  herself  in  this  matter.  Principal 
Shairp  has  recorded  that  '  he  never  ceased  to  regard 
Mr.  Campbell's  deposition  as  the  stoning  by  the 
Church  of  her  best  Prophet,  the  deliberate  rejection 
of  the  highest  light  vouchsafed  to  her  in  his  time;' 
and  that  in  his  eyes  all  the  calamities  that  soon 
befell  the  Church  were  as  judgments  for  her  wrong- 
doing. 

The  proceedings  in  Mr.  Campbell's  case  assumed 
before  they  closed  a  specially  interesting  phase.  He 
passed  in  his  defence  from  the  discussion  of  the 
special  heretical  doctrines  with  which  he  was  charged 
to  the  higher  question,  as  to  whether  the  doctrines — 
admitting  them  to  be  beyond  the  Coufcssioji  of  Faith 
— were  not  yet  obligatory  upon  the  Church  as  being 
the  truth  of  God?  Is  the  Church  not  bound  to 
acknowledge  any  higher  light  of  truth  than  she  has 
hitherto  received  if  made  manifest  from  the  Divine 
Word?  Is  it  not  of  the  very  function  of  the  Church 
to  declare  anew  the  truth  when  new  light  comes  to 
her  ?  A  famous  passage  in  the  Scottish  Confession 
of  1560,  which  both  Campbell  and  Edward  Irving 
preferred  greatly  to  the  later  Puritan  or  Westminster 
Confession,  was  quoted  on  the  subject,  to  the  effect 
that  Scripture  was  acknowledgedly  the  Supreme  Rule 
of  Faith,  and  that  no  sentence  or  article  is  to  be 
received  that  can  be  shown  to  be  inconsistent  with  its 
plain  teaching.  Mr.  Campbell  did  not  then  allow  that 
his  doctrines  were  inconsistent  with  a  fair  interpretation 
of  the  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith,  but  granting 
there  was  any  doubt  of  this,  he   appealed  with  con- 


1 5  2       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

fidence  to  Holy  Scripture  for  their  authority,  and  he 
maintained  that  the  true  principle  of  the  Church  was, 
not  to  put  her  Confession  on  a  level  with  Holy 
Scripture,  or  to  cast  any  from  her  bosom  except  on 
the  ground  that  they  taught  what  was  not  accord- 
ing to  the  Word  of  God.  '  If  you  show  me,'  he  said, 
'  that  anything  I  have  taught  is  inconsistent  with  the 
Word  of  God,  I  shall  give  it  up,  and  allow  you  to 
regard  it  as  heresy  ...  If  a  Confession  of  Faith  were 
something  to  stint  or  stop  the  Church's  growth  in 
light  and  knowledge,  and  to  say,  "Thus  far  shalt 
thou  go  and  no  further,"  then  a  Confession  of  Faith 
would  be  the  greatest  curse  that  ever  befell  a  church. 
Therefore  I  distinctly  hold  that  no  minister  treats 
the  Confession  of  Faith  right  if  he  does  not  come 
with  it,  as  a  party,  to  the  Word  of  God,  and  consent 
to  stand  or  fall  by  the  Word  of  God,  and  to  acknow- 
ledge no  other  tribunal  in  matters  of  heresy  than  the 
Word  of  God.  In  matters  of  doctrine  no  lower 
authority  can  be  recognised  than  that  of  God.'  ^ 

The  question  thus  opened  v/as  a  highly  significant 
one.  Half  a  century  ago,  however,  it  was  too  searching 
and  bold  a  departure  to  be  likely  to  help  Mr.  Camp- 
bell at  the  bar  of  any  Synod  or  Assembly  of  the 
Church,  the  more  so  that  it  was  combined  in  his  case 
with  a  certain  element  of  dogma  offensive  to  the 
'  moderate '  clergy,  and  by  no  means  fitted  in  itself 
to  strengthen  Mr.  Campbell's  position.  He  did  not 
argue,  for  example,  in  favour  of  a  general  latitude 
of   interpretation.      On    the   contrary,    he   expressly 

'  From  speech  of  Mr.  Campbell  before  the  bar  of  Synod  of  Glasgow 
and  Ayr,  which  he  regarded  as  the  best  exposition  of  his  side  of  the 
case. 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  153 

repudiated  such  a  latitude.  He  did  not  say,  I  claim 
for  myself  a  wider  application  of  the  Gospel  in  the 
light  of  the  Divine  word,  as  I  am  willing  to  allow 
a  similar  width  of  interpretation  to  others  who  have 
departed  as  far  from  the  letter  of  the  Confession  as  I 
may  have  done.  It  is  of  the  very  nature  of  a  docu- 
ment, like  the  Confession,  to  be  subject,  as  time  ad- 
vances, to  meanings  of  a  more  flexible  character  than 
those  which  may  have  been  in  the  view  of  its  original 
framers.  This  broad  and  common-sense  principle 
was  not  only  not  in  Mr.  Campbell's  mind,  but  was 
rejected  by  him  at  this  stage  of  his  career.^  He  was 
not  content  that  his  views  should  be  tolerated.  He 
claimed  recognition  for  them  as  '  the  truth  of  God.' 
Both  he  and  Mr.  Erskine,  with  all  their  personal 
humility  and  insight  into  the  perplexities  of  the  re- 
ligious mind  were  essentially  dogmatic  in  their  turn 
of  thought.  They  failed,  as  all  connected  with  the 
movement  more  or  less  failed,  in  historical  know- 
ledge— in  appreciation  of  the  growth  of  Christian 
doctrine — and  the  manner  in  which  higher  and  lower 
moments  fit  into  one  another  in  the  great  progress 
of  the  Church.  They  would  have  all  to  stand  on  the 
same  level  as  themselves,  and  they  did  not  hesitate  to 
judge  the  Christianity  of  others  from  their  own  point 
of  view.  They  not  only  had  the  true  light,  but  all 
those  who  opposed  them,  or  who  were  unable  to  see 
the  truth  as  they  saw  it,  were  in  darkness.  There  is 
something    painful,    I    confess,   in    their   readiness   of 

^  He  speaks  disparagingly  for  example  in  his  defence  of  the  '  charity  ' 
that  is  indulgent  to  all  manner  of  opinions,  and  which  regards 
'  speaking  dogmatically  as  necessarily  an  evil." — Aleftiorials,  vol.  i. 
p.  80. 


154       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

judgment,  and  their  incapacity  to  recognise  how 
much  Christian  good  there  may  be  in  opinions  differ- 
ing from  their  own — in  other  words,  in  their  failure 
to  perceive  tlie  impossibility  of  any  form  of  words 
— of  one  school  or  another — containing  what  they 
called  '  the  truth  of  God '  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
others.  They  did  not,  in  short,  rise  above  the  dog- 
matic temper  of  the  time,  while  they  sought  to 
enrich  its  dogmatic  thought.  Afterwards  they  at- 
tained higher  views.  The  searching  discussions  of  a 
later  time  in  England  helped  them  to  realise,  more 
than  was  possible  in  those  earlier  in  Scotland,  the 
hiscorical  conditions  underlying  all  dogmatic  state- 
ments oi  Divine  truth,  the  value  of  free  opinion, 
and  of  tolerating  within  the  Church  the  expression 
of  such  opinion.^  Mr.  Campbell,  indeed,  never  lost 
his  profound  feeling  for  dogma,  or  '  the  truth  of  God,' 
as  he  called  it.  His  first  and  main  thought  as  to  any 
new  views  was  always,  'are  they  true?'  Historical 
criticism,  of  which  he  confessed  he  knew  little,  never 
touched  the  inner  sphere  of  his  own  conviction ; 
but  he  came  to  appreciate  its  importance,  and  how 
much  it  must  affect  and  to  a  certain  extent  limit  all 
conclusions  drawn  from  Scripture.^ 

The  same  General  Assembly  which  deposed  Mr. 
Campbell  deprived  his  friend,  Mr.  Scott,  of  his  licence 
as  a  preacher  of  the  gospel.  They  held  the  same 
views,  with  this  difference,  that  Scott  acknowledged 
from  the  first  their  inconsistency  with  the  '  Confession 

^  In  1856  he  wrote,  '  I  am  sure  free  discussion  within  the  Church  is 
better  than  the  constant  necessity  to  form  a  new  sect,  if  one  has  any 
new  thought  to  utter.' — Memorials,  vol.  i.  p.  276. 

*  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  pp.  8-43. 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  155 

of  Faith.'  It  is  said  that  Campbell  came  to  acknow- 
ledge this  also,  as  he  walked  home  with  his  friend 
from  the  General  Assembly,  'the  dawn  breaking  upon 
them '  as  they  sought  their  lodgings.^  It  must  be 
allowed  that  the  current  thinking  of  the  Church 
fifty  years  ago  was  opposed  to  the  doctrine  preached 
by  both, — a  conclusive  illustration  of  which  is  found 
in  the  combination  of  the  two  parties,  '  Moderate ' 
and  '  Evangelical,'  in  the  sentence  passed  upon 
Mr.  Campbell.  His  aged  father  interposed  at  the 
end  with  one  of  the  most  touching  speeches  ever 
heard  in  any  Assembly,  in  which,  divesting  his  son's 
doctrine  of  all  novelty  of  language,  he  claimed  it  to 
be  the  same  doctrine  they  all  taught.  The  emotion 
of  Dr.  Macknight,  then  chief  clerk  of  Assembly,  is 
said  to  have  been  such  that  he  gave  utterance  to 
strange  words  ominous  as  to  the  future  of  the  Church. 
But  the  fiat  had  gone  forth ;  and,  by  a  large  and 
nearly  unanimous  vote,^  Mr.  Campbell's  connection 
with  the  Church  of  Scotland  was  severed. 

Mr.  Campbell's  after  life,  and  the  quiet  course  of 
earnest  thought  which  led  to  his  great  work  en  The 
Nature  of  the  Atonement,  by  which  he  came  to  have 
an  honoured  name  in  all  the  Churches,  and  to  take 
rank  as  one  of  the  most  profound  theologians  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  belong  to  a  later  epoch.  There 
have  been  few  more  striking  instances  of  the  reward 
of  the  righteous  than  his  life  presents.  His  sweetness 
of  nature,  and  the  constant  indwelling  of  his  '  funda- 
mental faith '  in  the  great  love  of  God  to  all  human 

1  Dr.  Hanna,  Erskine's  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  140. 

2  119  to  6.  The  words  attributed  to  Dr.  Macknight  will  be  found 
in  Mr.  Erskine's  Letters,  Ed.  by  Dr.  Hanna,  vol.  i.  p.  137. 


156       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

souls,  kept  him  free  from  all  sectarian  association  in 
the  midst  of  his  isolation.  He  never  ceased  to  have 
a  warm  heart  towards  the  Church  which  cast  him 
forth.  He  grew  in  ever  deeper  knowledge  of  Divine 
Truth;  and  his  work  on  the  Atonement,  and  a  smaller 
volume  a  few  years  later  on  Revelation,  remain  trea- 
sures to  the  Christian  Church  in  all  time  to  come. 

The  General  Assembly  of  1831  not  only  discarded 
Campbell  and  Scott,  but  also  initiated  proceedings 
against  Edward  Irving.  Irving's  is  too  great  a  name 
to  be  omitted  in  our  review  of  the  religious  move- 
ment of  this  time — and  yet  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
he  hardly  belongs  to  it.  With  all  our  admiration  of 
his  genius, — and  in  point  of  genius  he  stands  in  some 
respects  unrivalled  among  his  contemporaries, — he 
was  never  at  any  time  of  his  life  a  thinker.  He  was  a 
great  power;  but  the  elements  of  his  power  lay  in  the 
region  of  spiritual  life, — of  oratorical  impulse, — and 
not  of  spiritual  thought.  His  Orations,  published  in 
1823  in  the  second  year  of  his  London  ministry,  taken 
as  a  whole,  are  the  highest  expression  of  his  mind, 
and  their  characteristics  are  grandeur  of  imagination, 
richness  of  poetic  and  spiritual  conception,  and  ful- 
ness of  vivid  feeling  rather  than  any  glow  of  higher 
insight,  penetrating  to  the  deeper  problems  of  religion. 
They  fail  in  clear-sighted  intelligence  and  definite  or 
even  suggestive  development  of  ideas.  We  cannot  bet- 
ter mark  this  than  by  saying  that  no  one  would  think 
now  of  having  recourse  to  Irving's  Orations  or  any 
of  his  works — as  they  would  have  recourse  either  to 
Mr.  Erskine's  volume,  or  to  Mr.  Campbell's — in  order 
to  understand  the  higher  aspects  of  religious  inquiry 
towards  which    his  age  was    moving.      He  was  the 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotlmid.  1 5  7 

superior  of  both  in  much ;  the  question  is  not  one  of 
personal  comparison  at  all ;  but  they  reached  their 
idea  along  lines  of  pure  spiritual  insight,  whereas 
Irving  was  caught  in  the  whirl  of  his  own  strong 
emotions,  and  carried  forward  by  their  overpowering 
rush.  The  most  loveable  of  men — '  the  brotherliest 
human  soul,'  as  Carlyle  said  of  him — he  was  open  to 
impressions  from  all  sides.  Carlyle  himself,  Chalmers, 
Coleridge,  Campbell,  all  contributed  to  give  him 
impulse,  till  he  sunk  at  last  under  an  order  of  impres- 
sions equally  disastrous  and  unworthy  of  him.  Cole- 
ridge he  confessed  to  be  his  greatest  teacher,  but  he 
failed  to  catch  the  higher  spirit  of  Coleridge's  thought. 
'You  have  been  more  profitable  to  my  faith  in  ortho- 
dox doctrine,  to  my  spiritual  understanding  of  the 
Word  of  God,  and  to  my  right  conception  of  the 
Church,'  he  said  to  the  Highgate  philosopher  in  dedi- 
cating to  him  his  famous  missionary  sermon,  'than 
any  or  all  the  men  with  whom  I  have  entertained 
friendship  and  conversation.' 

Yet  with  all  Irving's  susceptibility  of  impression, 
there  was  in  him  from  the  first  not  merely  the 
element  of  dogma  belonging  to  his  time,  but  a 
supreme  dogmatism  amounting  to  priestliness.  Docile 
as  a  pupil,  he  was  inflexible  when  once  he  received 
any  principle  into  his  mind.  Constantly  craving 
after  what  was  positive  and  authoritative  in  religion, 
he  was  ready  to  welcome  new  truth,  especially  if 
coming  from  some  transcendental  region  or  enforced 
with  high  personal  pretensions — yet  he  seemed  incap- 
able of  revising  his  accumulated  convictions.  He 
was,  in  short,  wholly  destitute  of  the  critical  intellect. 
He   never  knew  what  it  was   to   hold  his    mind   in 


158       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

doubt  or  suspense.  Of  Biblical  interpretation  he 
knew  nothing  in  any  true  sense,  or  of  the  historical 
conditions  underlying  the  whole  history  of  revelation 
and  Christian  thought.  The  modern  spirit — liberalism 
in  all  its  forms — was  as  hateful  to  him  as  to  Dr.  New- 
man. The  age  seemed  to  him  moving  towards  per- 
dition, and  the  critics  and  intellectualists  of  all  sorts 
only  helping  it  onwards.  The  talent  of  Byron  and 
Southey  was  alike  diabolic.  Milton  was  the  'arch- 
angel '  and  Brougham  the  'archfiend'  of  radicalism; 
the  London  University  '  the  synagogue  of  Satan,'  and 
Catholic  emancipation  'the  unchristianising  of  the 
legislature.' 

This  was  not  the  temper  of  a  thinker,  nor  even  of 
a  large-minded  prophet.  It  indicated  unhealthiness 
from  the  first.  Grand  as  was  his  genius  there  was  a 
lurid  play  in  it — the  working,  not  of  thought,  but  of 
spiritual  passion.  He  moved  on  a  scale  of  lofty  but 
uncurbed  emotion.  His  great  ambition  for  the  Gospel 
was  to  make  it  'more  heroical  and  magnanimous/ 
but  he  lacked  the  balance  of  philosophy  and  of 
common  sense  for  so  great  a  task. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  a  spirit  so  high, 
yet  so  imperfectly  balanced,  should  ere  long  have 
plunged  into  difficulties.  As  his  fame  grew  as  a 
preacher,  many  eyes  watched  him  with  admiration ; 
some,  like  his  friend  Carlyle,  with  fear ;  others  with 
envy.  A  cry  arose  that  he  was  preaching  heresy  as 
to  our  Lord's  human  nature.  The  truth  was,  as  is 
now  universally  admitted,  that  in  this  matter  Irving 
had  really  reverted  to  an  older  and  more  catholic 
type  of  doctrine.  It  had  not  been  customary  in  Scot- 
land to  dwell  on  the  Incarnation  in  connection  with 


Religions  Thought  in  Scotland.  159 

the  sufferings  and  atonement  of  Christ.  Irving  saw, 
as  Dr.  Campbell  afterwards^  so  powerfully  developed, 
their  organic  connection.  The  reality  of  Christ's  human 
nature,  'as  bone  of  our  bone,  and  flesh  of  our  flesh,' 
became  a  cardinal  point  of  his  theology.  Christ  took 
upon  Him  our  nature,  not  in  any  abstract  or  unreal 
form,  but  with  all  its  sinful  tendencies.  In  Him  it 
was  sinless,  but  not  through  any  quality  making  it  to 
differ  from  humanity  in  general,  but  through  '  the 
indwelling  of  the  Holy  Ghost'  That  he  ever  meant 
to  inculcate  the  actual  sinfulness  of  Christ's  human 
nature,  no  candid  mind  can  maintain.  But  he  was  at 
fault  here,  as  often,  from  the  rhetorical  extravagance 
of  his  language.  He  used  unguardedly  such  expres- 
sions as  that '  Christ's  human  nature  was  in  all  respects 
as  ours!'  *  fallen  and  sinful ' — he  meant  in  the  potency, 
not  in  the  fact  of  sin.  But  the  subject  was  not  one 
easily  understood,  while  it  was  easily  misrepresented. 
Notwithstanding  all  his  disclaimers,  it  was  ultimately 
made  the  ground  of  libel  against  him  before  the 
Presbytery  of  Annan,  and,  after  something  of  a  mock 
trial,  he  was  deposed  in  the  spring  of  1833. 

There  were  other  influences,  however,  at  work  lead- 
ing to  Edward  Irving's  deposition.  He  had  not  only 
associated  himself  with  Mr.  Campbell  from  the  year 
1828,  when  he  came  to  the  Gareloch  to  visit  him  ;  but 
he  had  become  identified,  in  a  manner  Mr.  Campbell 
never  was,  with  the  religious  extravagances  w^hich 
arose  in  this  quarter  in  1830.  First  the  '  gift  of 
Tongues,'  and  then  the  '  gift  of  Healing '  were  sup- 
posed to  have  revisited  the  Church  in  the  person  of 
certain  invalids  in  the  parish  of  Roseneath  and  the 

*  A'ature  of  the  Atonement,  1856. 


1 60       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

town  of  Greenock.  The  phenomena  were  unquestion- 
ably of  a  singular  character  ^ — apparently  so  united 
with  divine  faith  and  holy  lives,  that  they  carried 
away  Mr.  Erskine  as  well  as  Edward  Irving.  The 
healthier  nature  of  the  former,  however,  threw  off  the 
infection.  Irving,  with  his  mind  enfeebled  by  the 
morbid  study  of  prophecy,  and  the  exhausting  excite- 
ments of  his  London  career,  was  not  only  taken 
captive  himself,  but  under  his  encouragement,  the 
delusion  extended  to  his  congregation.  '  Bedlam  and 
Chaos,'  as  Carlyle  says,  was  the  result.  The  congre- 
gation became  violently  divided.  His  friends  remon- 
strated ;  but  all  was  in  vain.  The  spiritual  fever  had 
gone  to  his  brain.  It  was  '  impossible  to  make  an 
impression  on  him.'  He  was  left  in  hopeless  loneli- 
ness amidst  the  fanatics  that  surrounded  him ;  and 
so  passed  away  from  living  connection  with  his  age 
before  he  received  the  sentence  of  expulsion  from  the 
Church  so  dear  to  him. 

With  all  our  love  and  admiration  of  Edward  Irvinp- 
we  cannot  regard  him  in  any  true  sense  as  a  leader  of 
Christian  opinion.  But  if  he  did  not  move  its  thought, 
he  greatly  helped  to  deepen  its  religious  consciousness. 
All  men  recognised  in  him  a  spiritual  power ;  a  repre- 
sentative, at  least  in  his  earlier  London  years,  of  reli- 
gion, as  entitled  not  only  to  acknowledgment  and 
sovereignty  over  all  other  interests,  but  as  the  most 
magnificent  reality  which  can  claim  human  attention. 
He  was,  in  short,  as  Coleridge  said  of  him,  '  a  mighty 
wrestler  in  the  cause  of  spiritual  religion  and  Gospel 
morality.' 

Our   task    is   wellnigh    done   in    this    lecture.     Its 
^  See  Mrs.  Oliphant's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  102  et  seq. 


Religious  TJiought  in  Scotland.  1 6 1 

chronological  limits  are  to  be  carefully  noted.  Mr. 
Erskine's  first  book  was  published  in  1820,  and  Edward 
Irving  died  in  1834.  What  is  known  as  the  Row  move- 
ment with  which  the  three  names  we  have  reviewed 
were  more  or  less  closely  connected,  had  run  its  course 
by  the  last  of  these  dates.  This  was  the  special 
theological  interest  of  the  time  in  Scotland,  and  in  its 
higher  aspects  it  was  distinctively  a  movement  of 
religious  thought,  the  effects  of  which  survive  in 
many  forms.  Had  we  been  able  to  extend  our  re- 
view we  might  have  considered  the  fresh  accession  of 
Evangelical  life  which  began  in  the  Church  of  Scotland 
at  the  same  time, and  rose  into  continuous  and  increas- 
ing strength  for  ten  years  later.  Two  names  above  all 
represent  this  movement — Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  and 
Dr.  Chalmers — to  both  of  whom  we  have  more  than 
once  alluded.  The  name  of  Chalmers  is  in  all  the 
churches  honoured  as  one  of  Christian  genius  con- 
secrated to  the  highest  services  which  any  man  can 
render  to  his  church  and  his  country.  His  character- 
istic work,  however,  was  not  in  the  field  of  Christian 
thought.  He  broke  out  no  new  lines  in  this  field. 
He  initiated  no  new  movement.  Both  he  and  An- 
drew Thomson  were  powerful  leaders  on  the  old 
lines — the  latter  with  inferior,  although  staunch  in- 
tellectual weapons.  Both  were  great  orators  beyond 
question,  the  former  excelling  in  massive,  sustained, 
and  overpowering  vehemence — the  latter  in  logical 
fervour  and  freedom  of  utterance.  In  both  the 
Evangelical  section  of  the  church,  which  for  ^  time 
had  succumbed  in  intellectual  repute  to  the  moderate 
party  represented  by  men  like  Principal  Robertson 
and  Principal   Hill,  received  an  accession  of  strength. 

L 


1 62       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

which  carried  it  ere  long  to  predominance,  and  told 
significantly  on  the  subsequent  course  of  events. 
Chalmers  had  much  the  broader  sympathies  of  the 
two.  He  was,  we  have  seen,  the  friend  and  corre- 
spondent of  Erskine,  and  is  said  to  have  shared  many 
of  his  views.  It  is  alleged  also  that  he  looked  on  the 
proceedings  against  Irving  and  Campbell  with  disap- 
proving eyes.  Possibly,  if  he  had  been  a  man  of  more 
independent,  courageous,  and  clear-sighted  vision  than 
he  was,  he  might  have  done  something  to  stay  these 
proceedings,  or  guide  them  to  a  more  lenient  result. 
But  the  panic  which  moved  the  church  at  the  time 
was  too  real  to  have  been  easily  stayed;  and  Chalmers 
did  nothing.  Andrew  Thomson  suddenly  died  in  the 
midst  of  his  labours  in  the  same  year  that  Campbell 
was  deposed,  and  left  the  guidance  of  the  church  to 
younger  men,  of  whom  the  world  has  heard,  but  not 
in  connection  with  the  progress  of  Christian  thought. 
The  great  politico-ecclesiastical  movement  which  they 
led  is  beyond  our  province. 

There  is  still  one  name,  however,  that  deserves  to 
be  recalled  before  we  close.  There  was  published 
during  the  course  of  the  Row  excitement  a  series  of 
anonymous  volumes,  chiefly  of  a  devotional  character, 
which  excited  a  good  deal  of  attention  from  the 
graceful  and  interesting  style  in  which  they  were 
written.  They  were  felt  to  be  unlike  the  ordinary 
devotional  literature  of  Scotland, — even  more  so  in 
some  respects  than  Mr.  Erskine's  volumes  had  been. 
For  Mr.  Erskine,  layman  as  he  was,  used  much  of 
the  old  theological  phraseology.  It  is  strange  indeed 
to  a  modern  reader  to  observe  how  very  technical 
many  of  his  expressions  are, — expressions  not  much 


Religious  Thought  in  Scotland.  1 63 

heard  now  even  in  the  pulpit.  The  anonymous  books 
in  question  were  singularly  free  from  all  this  conven- 
tional phraseology.  Their  style  was  as  clear  and  pure 
as  Dr.  Arnold's  sermons, — with  less  substance,  but 
even  a  more  winning  and  flexible  grace.  The  best 
known  of  them  was  a  manual  of  Prayers  under  the 
title  of  The  Morning  and  Evening  Sacrifice,  which 
soon  established  itself  as  a  familiar  devotional  com- 
panion in  many  households.  I  remember  the  leader 
of  the  moderate  party, — who  unhappily  moved  the 
sentence  against  Mr.  Campbell, — saying  that  he  had 
long  used  this  volume  at  morning  and  evening  prayer 
without  the  faintest  suspicion  that  it  contained  any 
heresy.  Other  volumes  from  the  same  source  were 
The  Last  Supper,  also  a  devotional  manual.  Fare- 
well to  Time,  A  Manual  of  Conduct ;  but  especially 
a  work  in  three  volumes  under  the  title  of  The  True 
Plan  of  a  Living  Temple,  published  in  1830.  This 
work  contained  the  author's  system  of  thought,  and 
unlike  the  others,  whose  quiet  and  beautiful  devo- 
tional feeling  attracted  interest  and  nothing  more, 
it  soon  began  to  excite  inquiry  and  criticism.  The 
Christian  Lnstructor,  ever  on  the  watch  for  the  ortho- 
doxy of  the  Church,  reviewed  it  at  length  in  its 
March  number,  1831,  expressing  admiration  of  its 
literary  merits,  but  emphasising  its  theology  as  '  not 
only  defective,  but  positively  pernicious.' 

It  must  be  admitted  that  The  True  Plan  of  a  Living 
Temple  presents  many  features  open  to  criticism. 
It  not  only  opposes  itself  confessedly  to  the  prevalent 
course  of  religious  ideas, — 'the  current  doctrines  of 
divines  and  moralists,' — but  it  sets  forth  at  large  a 
philosophy  of    life    little    consistent  with    Calvinistic 


1 64       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

teachincr.  The  Gospel  is  viewed  mainly  as  a  means, 
among  many  others,  of  generating  the  principles  of 
order  and  goodness  which  are  everywhere  seen  in 
conflict  with  the  principles  of  disorder  and  vice.  The 
world-process  is  a  process  of  good  triumphing  over 
evil, — a  Divine  kingdom  everywhere  displacing  the 
rule  of  evil ; — and  the  great  function  of  Christianity 
is  to  reinforce  the  good  against  the  evil,  to  extend 
'  the  prevalence  of  knowledge  and  virtue  and  concord 
and  freedom  and  happiness  among  men.' 

It  is  enough  to  quote  such  a  sentence  to  show  how- 
very  different  a  note  this  book  strikes  from  the  usual 
note  of  religious  orthodoxy.  Nor  were  many  of  its 
special  ideas  less  at  variance  with  the  latter.  Our 
Lord  is  represented  as  speaking  only  of  a  '  Father  in 
Heaven'  who  views  all  His  creatures  with  love  and 
pity.  This  is  'the  fine  idea  on  which  His  doctrine  is 
founded — by  which  it  is  pervaded  ; — and  by  means  of 
it  he  sought  for  mankind  the  three  following  objects  : 
— First,  the  improvement  of  their  religious  worship  ; 
secondly,  the  perfection  of  their  moral  ideas ;  and 
lastly,  the  regulation  of  their  social  situations.'  Suf- 
fering and  punishment,  while  entering  into  the  Divine 
constitution  of  things — 'the  true  plan  of  the  living 
temple' — are  not  '  retributive,'  or,  to  use  the  author's 
own  expression,  '  vindictive,' — only  '  corrective.'  The 
book,  in  short,  embodies  a  contemplative  philosophy 
of  human  progress  rather  than  any  exposition  of  the 
Gospel  conceived  after  a  Calvinistic  model.  It  is 
humanitarian  rather  than  theological,  the  work  of  a 
thoughtful  student  living  in  a  world  of  his  own  rather 
than  of  a  Christian  preacher.  It  contains  many  fine 
trains    of    reflection — thin   in  texture,   and    here    and 


Religious  Thouglit  in  Scotland.  1 65 

there  feeble  in  grasp  of  moral  realities — but  beautiful 
in  imaginative  feeling  and  almost  always  graceful  in 
literary  expression.  Anything  less  like  the  current 
theology  cannot  be  conceived — and  this  effect  of 
contrast  was  greatly  heightened  by  scattered  allusions 
and  criticisms  in  the  book.  Howe,  for  example, 
revered  by  all  Puritan  thinkers,  was  spoken  of  as 
having  '  a  strong  tinge  of  fanaticism ; '  Calvin  was 
'  the  prince  of  dogmatists  ; '  and  Bunyan  and  Wesley 
are  '  notorious  specimens  of  enthusiasm.' 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  book,  so  far  as  it 
excited  public  interest,  was  very  distasteful  to  the 
orthodox  clergy.  But  there  were  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  meddling  with  it.  While  its  spirit  and  many  of 
its  reflections  were  so  obviously  alien  to  the  Creed  of 
the  Church,  it  did  not  announce  any  definite  heretical 
teaching.  More  than  all,  its  author  was  invisible. 
I  do  not  know  how  far  he  may  have  been  known  at 
this  time  to  those  who  were  at  the  pains  to  inquire  ; 
but  his  anonymity  secured  him  from  public  comment ; 
while  he  plainly  did  not  claim  to  be  a  heresiarch,  or 
to  attach,  as  Mr.  Campbell  and  others  had  done,  vital 
importance  to  his  views.  No  steps  therefore  were  taken 
against  the  book  during  all  the  orthodox  ferment  of 
the  early  time,  when  not  only  Campbell  and  Irving, 
but  others,  more  or  less  in  sympathy  with  them,  were 
cast  out  of  the  Church.  It  was  not  till  nearly  ten 
years  later  that  the  author  became  the  subject  of  pro- 
secution, and  finally  of  expulsion  from  the  Church. 
It  gradually  came  to  be  known  that  the  writer  of 
the  volumes  was  a  quiet  country  clergyman,  Mr. 
Wright  of  Borthwick,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Dal- 
keith, a  friend  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  spoken  of 


1 66       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

with  commendation  in  his  journal, — a  scholarly  con- 
templative man,  whose  preaching  had  much  of  the 
same  quiet  thoughtfulness  and  pensive  beauty  as 
his  books.  It  would  have  been  well  to  have  spared 
him  in  his  advanced  years,  or  at  the  most  to  have 
admonished  him  to  write  no  more.  But  the  evan- 
gelical fervour,  which  culminated  in  the  '  Disruption,' 
was  then  running  to  its  height.  His  Presbytery 
was  instructed  to  libel  him  by  the  General  Assembly 
of  1839,  and  in  1841,  the  same  year  in  which  the 
Strathbogie  ministers  were  deposed  for  contumacy 
to  the  orders  of  the  Assembly,  Mr.  Wright  of  Borth- 
wick's  ministerial  career  was  brought  to  an  end. 
There  were  circumstances  of  peculiar  harshness  in  his 
case — very  unpleasant  to  recall.  He  himself  declared 
that  he  '  disowned  and  abjured  every  one  of  the  errors  ' 
laid  to  his  charge,  and  that  the  extracts  from  his 
books  on  which  they  were  founded,  rightly  understood, 
did  not  at  all  sustain  them.  By  a  large  vote  he  was 
refused  any  liberty  of  explanation,  and  unlike  some 
who  had  stood  in  the  same  position,  surrounded  by 
their  friends — ready  to  receive  them  when  cast  out — 
Mr.  Wright  went  forth  from  the  Church  a  homeless 
old  man.  It  was  the  heyday  of  evangelical  zeal ;  but 
the  blessing  of  that  *  charity  that  suffereth  long  and  is 
kind  '  certainly  did  not  rest  on  this  General  Assembly 
or  its  high-handed  leaders. 

Nothing  seems  more  remarkable  in  closing  this 
review  than  the  brief  period  within  which  all  these 
phenomena  of  religious  thought  were  crowded.  They 
are  all  virtually  the  product  of  the  third  decade  of 
the  century,  marked  in  England  by  the  religious 
philosophy   of    Coleridge    and    the  liberalism  of  the 


Religious  Thoiight  in  Scotlmid.  167 

early  Oriel  school.  There  has  seldom  been  in  our 
national  history  a  more  fruitful  epoch  of  religious 
thought.  And  the  same  general  character  is  more 
or  less  stamped  on  all  its  manifestations,  various 
as  these  otherwise  are.  This  character  may  be 
said  to  be  expansiveness.  The  theological  mind  is 
seen  opening  in  all  directions.  There  is  a  general 
breaking  up  of  the  old  close  traditional  systems 
transmitted  from  the  earlier  time.  The  idea  of  God 
as  the  loving  Father  of  all  men — of  the  religious  life 
as  having  its  root  in  immediate  contact  with  the 
Divine,  rather  than  in  adherence  to  any  definite 
forms  whether  of  Church  belief  or  Church  order;  the 
recognition  of  the  religious  consciousness  as  a  per- 
vading element  of  human  nature  with  its  own  rights 
in  the  face  of  Revelation,  and  especially  in  the  face 
of  the  scholastic  dogmas  which  had  been  based  on 
Revelation ;  the  desire  after  a  more  concrete  and 
living  faith  merging  into  one  the  abstractions  of 
theological  nomenclature ;  and  more  than  all  perhaps 
an  optimist  Catholic  ideal  displacing  the  sectarian 
ideals  of  the  older  schools  of  thought ;  all  these 
larger  features  meet  us  with  more  or  less  prominence. 
Teaching  like  Mr.  Erskine's,  Archbishop  Whately's, 
or  that  of  the  author  of  the  True  Plan  of  the  Living 
Temple, — however  unlike  otherwise, — unite  in  taking 
a  more  expansive  and  optimist  view  of  the  range  of 
Christianity,  and  its  relation  to  human  nature  and 
life.  The  change  of  tone  in  this  respect  from  the 
poetry  of  Cowper,  for  example,  or  the  theology  of 
Mr.  Erskine's  uncle,  the  old  minister  of  Greyfriars, 
whose  portrait  survives  in  Guy  Mannering ;  or  again, 
from  the  piety  of  such   a  home  as  that  of    Keble's 


1 68       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

father,  or  even  of  Maurice's  father,  is  immense.  One 
feels  in  passing  from  the  one  to  the  other  as  emerg- 
ing into  wider  air  and  larger  room.  The  intellect 
plays  with  a  higher  freedom.  Religion  has  grown 
grander  and  '  more  majestical.'  It  emphasises  less 
the  distinction  between  the  church  and  the  world — the 
'  clean '  and  the  unclean.  It  claims  a  wider  sovereignty 
— a  more  powerful  and  extended  hold  of  humanity ; 
in  short,  a  more  real  Catholicism  than  any  church 
had  yet  assigned  it.  The  reaction  set  in  again  during 
the  following  decade  with  the  Oxford  School  in 
England  and  a  '  high  flying '  Evangelicalism  in 
Scotland.  But  modern  Christianity  has  never  lost 
the  richer  mental  tone  and  broader  spirit  of  love 
that  infused  themselves  into  it  in  the  earlier  decade. 
It  has  shown  a  larger  spirit  ever  since. 


V. 

THOMAS    CARLYLE  AS  A  RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 

TN  our  lectures  hitherto  we  have  surveyed  the 
phenomena  of  rehgious  thought  as  in  the  main 
developed  within  the  Churches.  Even  Coleridge 
stands  in  close  connection  with  the  Church  of  England, 
of  which  he  was  a  devoted  member,  and  within 
whose  borders  his  teaching  chiefly  spread.  Noncon- 
formity, rich  as  it  was  in  works  of  philanthropy  and 
evangelical  earnestness,  did  not  originate  any  new 
lines  of  Christian  thought.  Robert  Hall  was  perhaps 
its  greatest  name  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  century  ;Mn 
massive  and  brilliant  intellectuality  he  was  unequalled; 
and  the  fame  of  his  preaching  still  survives ;  but  he 
propagated  no  new  ideas,  nor  can  he  be  said  to  have 
been  a  new  force  in  religious  literature.  Nothing  can 
be  more  barren  now-a-days  than  the  doctrinal  contro- 
versies which  divided  certain  sections  of  the  Presby- 
terians and  Independents,  represented  by  men  like 
Belsham  on  the  one  hand,  and  Pye  Smith  on  the 
other.  The  latter  was  an  accomplished  scholar  and 
divine,  and  handled  his  argumentative  weapons  with 
success ;  but,  with  much  knowledge  as  a  Biblical 
critic,  he  belonged  to  the  purely  dogmatic  school,  and 
his  labours  have  left  no  fruitful  results. 

*  His  ministry  at  Leicester  extended  from  1809  to  1826. 


1 70       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

During  the  earlier  part  of  the  century  higher 
thought  of  any  kind,  save  in  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth, 
was  dormant.  The  voice  of  Philosophy  was  well  nigh 
dead.  In  Edinburgh  the  old  Scottish  School  had 
found  its  last  voice  in  Dugald  Stewart ;  and  Carlyle 
tells  us  how  little  spiritual  food  of  any  kind  he  found 
at  the  University,^  '  There  was  much  talk  about 
progress  of  the  species,  dark  ages,  and  the  like,  but  the 
hungry  young  looked  up  to  their  spiritual  nurses,  and 
for  food  were  bidden  eat  the  east  wind.'^  Dr.  Thomas 
Brown,  '  eloquent  and  full  of  enthusiasm  about  simple 
suggestion,  relative,  etc.,  was  found  utterly  unprofitable.'* 
Otherwise  there  was  no  breath  of  living  mov^ement 
anywhere.  The  most  hardy  imagination  could  hardly 
connect  Bentham,  or  any  of  his  speculations,  with 
religious  thought.  Great  as  he  may  have  been  in  his 
own  line  as  a  legislative  and  legal  reformer,  Bentham 
cannot  be  called  anything  more  than  a  sciolist  in 
religion.  He  had  but  a  feeble  grasp  of  the  subject 
either  speculatively  or  historically. 

The  time  was  preparing,  however,  for  a  revival  of 
higher  thinking  in  more  quarters  than  one,  not  only 
within  the  Churches,  but  outside  their  borders. 
Coleridge  planted  his  thought  firmly  within  the  circle 
of  Christian  ideas.  His  religious  philosophy,  revolu- 
tionary as  it  was  for  his  age,  was  a  philosophy  not 
only  congenial  to  Christianity,  but  having  a  footing 
within  it  since  the  days  of  the  Alexandrian  School. 
But  there  were  seeds  of  thought  also  growing  in  other 
directions.  In  times  of  great  movement  religious 
questions  become   pervading;    they  spread  into   the 

^  Sartor  Resartus,  B.  II.  c.  iii.  *  Ibid. 

*  Early  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  25. 


Tkofnas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   171 

general  intellectual  atmosphere.  They  lay  hold  of 
a  class  of  minds  who,  while  repelling  the  old  solutions 
and  the  ecclesiastical  connections  identified  with  them, 
are  yet  restlessly  impelled  to  new  solutions.  They 
are  unable  to  leave  religion  aside,  and  frequently 
exert  a  powerful  influence  on  its  course  of  develop- 
ment. Such  minds,  if  not  religious  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  are  full  of  '  religiosity ' ;  and  no  picture  of  the 
movement  of  religious  thought  would  be  at  all 
complete  which  did  not  bring  them  under  review, 

Thomas  Carlyle  and  John  Stuart  Mill  were  both 
pre-eminently  men  of  this  stamp.  Bred  in  the  most 
diverse  circumstances,  they  have  exercised  upon  their 
generation  a  distinctive  influence  in  great  part  of  a 
religious  character.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  religious  thinking  of  our  time  has  taken  a  certain 
direction  and  colour  from  both  of  a  highly  significant 
kind,  well  deserving  attention — from  the  former,  as 
in  himself  a  rich  and  fruitful  if  indefinite  power — 
from  the  latter,  as  the  chief  member  of  a  school 
with  a  very  definite  bearing  on  the  course  of  higher 
opinion.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  both  represent 
the  negative  attitude  to  historical  religion,  which  has 
grown  so  strong  in  our  day,  but  there  is  also  a  sense 
in  which  both,  and  especially  Carlyle,  have  contri- 
buted to  enlighten  and  enlarge  the  sphere  of  religious 
thought.  So  very  different  were  they  that  it  may 
seem  absurd  to  class  them  together ;  yet  they  were 
closely  related  both  by  personal,  and  in  some  degree 
by  intellectual  ties.  Their  ideals  as  to  religion  and 
everything  else  became  in  the  end  essentially  con- 
tradictory ;  but  at  first  they  were  drawn  together  by 
common  sympathies  and  aspirations.     My  aim  in  this 


172       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

lecture  and  the  next  will  be  to  give  some  account  of 
both,  and  of  their  religious  opinions.  I  make  no  pre- 
tension to  judge  at  length  their  general  intellectual 
and  literary  influence.  It  is  only  as  they  seem  to 
stand  in  close  connection  with  our  subject  that  I 
venture  to  sketch  their  character  and  teaching. 

There  are  few  men  of  our  generation,  or  indeed  of 
any  generation,  of  whom  we  have  a  more  detailed 
and  vivid  picture  than  we  have  of  Thomas  Carlyle, 
The  only  complaint  is  that  we  already  know  too  much 
of  him.  Carlyle  biographic  literature  has  poured  so 
copiously  from  the  press  that  readers  have  been 
satiated  with  it.  The  great  writer  himself  is  such  a 
master  of  graphic  portraiture,  that  all  the  scenes  and 
surroundings  of  his  childhood  live  before  us  as  if  we 
ourselves  had  lived  in  them.  His  early  home  at 
Ecclefechan ;  his  father  and  mother,  with  their  frugal 
and  pious  ways ;  the  farm  of  Mainhill,  where  he  first 
studied  Faust  in  a  dry  ditch,  are  all  clear  as  in  a 
photograph.  Both  father  and  mother  were  'burghers' 
of  the  strictest  type,  worshipping  in  a  humble  meeting- 
house, having  for  minister  a  certain  John  Johnstone, 
from  whom  Carlyle  learned  his  first  Latin,  and  who 
was  the  *  priestliest  man  '  that  he  ever  '  beheld  in  any 
ecclesiastical  guise.'  Even  if  we  allow  for  a  touch  of 
exaggeration  in  the  picture  of  the  '  peasant  union ' 
that  gathered  in  the  heath-thatched  house,  and  the 
simple  evangelist  that  ministered  to  them,  the  picture 
is  a  beautiful  one,  and  it  left  abiding  traces  in  Car- 
lyle's  memory.  '  On  me,  too,'  he  long  afterwards 
said,  '  their  pious  heaven-sent  influences  rest  and  live.' 

Carlyle  inherited  the  qualities  of  both  his  parents 
— the  sturdy  indomitable  promptness  of  his   father, 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher,    i  ']i 

whose  feat   in  taking   up  an  adversary  *  by  the  two 
flanks  and  hurhng  him  through  the  air/  was  notable 
and   long  remembered,   and   the   passionate   intensity 
and  devotion  of  his  mother.     The  race  was  a  strong 
race  in  whom  the  fighting  propensities  of  the  Border 
were  modified,  but  by  no  means  extinct.     The  rough, 
vigorous   fibre   of  the  family  was   transmitted  to  the 
grandson,  intellectually  and  morally.     It  is  only  too 
easy  to  see  now  in  the  extended  picture  of  his  life 
and    manners    that    Carlyle    remained    in    much    a 
peasant  to  the    last.     Beautiful    in    some    aspects  of 
character,    he    lacks    everywhere    gentlehood.       His 
sturdiness  becomes  too  often  rudeness,  and  his  inde- 
pendence  pure   wanton   self-assertion.       In   a   fit   of 
petulant  fuiy   he    could   bang   the  door    upon    Miss 
Welsh,  who  had  tormented  him  in  one  of  her  whim- 
sical moods  when  he  offered  her  the  homage  of  his 
affection.     In  the  midst  of  all  his  love  for  Irving  he 
writes  both  of  him  and  his  wife  at  times  with  a  pain- 
ful  touch    of  vulgarity.     It    is    needless    to   mention 
other  instances  of  the  same  kind, — how  he  professes 
his   liking  and  indebtedness    to  many,  ladies  among 
others,  and  then  abuses  them  roundly  on  very  little 
provocation.     Nowhere  does  his  strange,  brusque  in- 
tolerance burst  out  more  harshly  than  in  his  letters 
when  he  first  went  to  London  in  1824.     There  may 
have  been  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  his  graphic  picture 
of  the  literary  men  he  there  met.     There  is  certainly 
an  infinite  art  in  his  epithets.     But  amusing  as  some 
of  them  are  in  their  broad  expressiveness,  they  are 
painful   in  their   harshness ;   while  their  presumption 
can  hardly  be  called  less  than  enormous  when  we  re- 
member that  Carlyle  at  this  time  was  himself  without 


1 74      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

any  literary  reputation.  Surely  never  did  a  young 
Scotsman  carry  such  a  pair  of  eyes  into  the  world 
of  London  or  set  such  a  peremptory  mark  upon  its 
notabilities.  Behind  all  that  he  says  of  Coleridge  and 
Campbell  and  Hazlitt  and  De  Quincey  one  instinc- 
tively feels  that  there  must  have  been  something  higher 
and  more  deserving  of  respect  which  he  failed  to  see. 
He  makes  no  allowances ;  he  does  not  set  a  single 
figure  in  any  radiance  of  past  achievement  or  explana- 
tory necessity.  It  is  the  mere  ugliness  of  the  passing 
impression  that  he  transfers  to  his  pages.  There  is 
more  than  recklessness  in  this ;  there  is  a  certain 
rudeness  of  feeling.  And  this  rudeness  at  times  was 
more  than  a  lack  of  manner.  It  entered  into  his 
intellectual  judgment  and  vitiated  it.  It  made  him 
emphasise  characteristics  opposed  to  his  own,  and 
convert  mere  traits  of  strength  more  or  less  congenial 
to  his  own  character  into  virtues.  When  there  was 
no  play  for  his  visual  observation  and  for  the  know- 
ledge of  the  meaner  qualities  that  unhappily  mingle 
in  all  men  when  brought  within  the  range  of  personal 
knowledge,  Carlyle  could  not  only  be  reverent,  but 
unduly  reverent.  Cromwell  was  to  him  a  saint  as 
well  as  a  hero;  Danton  a  patriot;  Goethe  a  great 
character  as  well  as  teacher.  They  remained  glori- 
fied in  distance  and  imagination.  He  holds  his 
breath  over  a  somewhat  emptily  complimentary  letter 
of  Goethe's  at  the  very  time  that  he  is  abusing  his 
hterary  contemporaries  in  London.  Had  he  visited 
the  old  intellectual  sensualist  at  Weimar,  and  seen 
all  his  ways  there,  we  should  perhaps  have  had  a 
very  different  portrait.  For  admiration  with  Carlyle 
was  seldom  able  to  withstand   personal  contact,  and 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.    175 

all  imagery  save  that  of  his  early  home  became 
blackened  as  soon  as  the  veil  of  distance  was  re- 
moved. 

Carlyle    carried  from   his   home    a   deep   sense   of 
religion.     His  parents  were  both  devout,  his   father 
less  expressively  so ;  his  mother  showing  in  all  her 
letters  a  deep,  simple,  and  strong  piety  very  beautiful 
to   Carlyle  and   in   itself      Her   faith   stands   sure   in 
'  the  Word   of  God,'  which  she  never  fails  to  pray  her 
son  to  read  constantly.     She  entreats   him  *  to  mind 
his  chapters.'      '  Have  you  got  through  the  Bible  yet  ? ' 
she  asks  in   1817,  when  he  was  twenty-two  years  of 
age  and  schoolmastering  at  Kirkcaldy.     '  If  you  have, 
read  it  again.     I    hope  you  will   not  weary,  and   may 
the  Lord   open  your    understanding.'     Again,   'Oh, 
my  dear,  dear  son,  I  would  pray  for  a  blessing  on 
your  learning.     I  beg  you  with  all  the  feeling  of  an 
affectionate  mother  that  you  would  study  the  Word 
of  God.'^     Carlyle    felt  forced  to   excuse   himself  in 
the  same  year  that  he  '  had  not  been  quite  regular 
in    reading   that  best   of  Books    which   you  recom- 
mended to  me.'     However,  he  adds,  '  Last  night  I 
was  reading  upon  my  favourite  Job,  and  I  hope  to  do 
better   in   time   to   come.     I   entreat  you  to  believe 
that  I  am  sincerely  desirous  of  being  a  good   man ; 
and  though  we  may  differ  in  some  few  unimportant 
particulars,  yet  I  firmly  trust  that  the   same   Power 
which  created  us  with  imperfect  faculties  will  pardon 
the  errors  of  any  one  (and   none  are  without  them) 
who    seek    truth    and    righteousness    with    a    simple 
heart'     His  mother  did  not  like  the  phrase  '  imper- 
fect faculties,'  nor  perhaps  the  apologetic  tone  of  the 
1  Vol.  i.  p.  62. 


1/6       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

letter,  and  she  says  in  reply,  '  God  made  man  after 
his  own  image,  therefore  he  behoved  to  be  without 
any  imperfect  faculties.  Beware,  my  dear  son,  of 
such  thoughts;  let  them  not  dwell  on  your  mind. 
God  forbid.  Do  make  religion  your  great  study, 
Tom ;  if  you  repent  it,  I  will  bear  the  blame  for  ever.' 
This  affectionate  exhortation  belongs  to  the  year 
1 8 19,  when  Carlyle  had  already  abandoned  his  inten- 
tion of  entering  the  Church.  This,  as  is  well  known, 
was  his  original  destination,  and  the  earnest  desire  of 
both  his  father  and  mother.  It  is  remarkable  too 
that,  strong  seceders  as  they  were  themselves  from 
the  National  Church,  the  idea  does  not  seem  to  have 
occurred  to  them,  any  more  than  to  himself,  of  his 
entering  the  Secession  ministry.  After  completing 
his  Arts  course  at  the  Edinburgh  University,  he 
entered  the  Divinity  Hall  there,  although  he  never 
seems  to  have  attended  the  classes.  It  was  common 
at  this  time  for  divinity  students  to  pursue  their 
studies  by  simply  enrolling  themselves  and  appearing 
each  session  to  deliver  a  discourse.  It  sounds  strange 
now  to  hear  that  in  this  way  Carlyle  delivered  an 
English  sermon  from  the  text,  '  Before  I  was  afflicted 
I  went  astray,  but  now  I  keep  thy  word  ' — a  '  weak 
flowing  sentimental  piece,'  he  said,  for  which  however 
he  had  been  complimented  'by  comrades  and  Pro- 
fessor.' Afterwards  he  gave  a  Latin  discourse  on  the 
question  whether  there  was  or  was  not  such  a  thing 
as  Natural  Religion — possibly,  w^e  may  say  almost 
certainly,  from  the  same  theme  as  James  Mill  delivered 
his  Latin  discourse,  '  Nwn  sit  Dei  cognitio  natiiralis'^ 
It  was  on  this   last  occasion,  when  in  Edinburgh  in 

^  James  Mill:  a  Biography  by  Dr.  Alexander  Bain,  p.  21. 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.    177 

18 14,  that  he  first  met  Edward  Irving,  and  had  a 
'  skirmish  of  tongue  with  him '  at  a  friend's  rooms. 
He  had  indeed  seen  Irving  before  when  he  visited 
the  Annan  Grammar  School,  where,  as  half-mythi- 
cally  detailed  in  Sartor  Resartus,  Carlyle  suffered 
much  from  the  tyrannous  savagery  of  his  school- 
fellows. Irving,  as  is  well  known,  was  a  native  of 
Annan,  distant  only  a  few  miles  from  Ecclefechan. 

The  project  of  entering  the  Church,  dear  as  it  was 
to  the  hearts  of  his  parents,  seems  never  to  have 
been  cordially  entertained  by  Carlyle  himself,  and  so 
it  gradually  drifted  out  of  his  mind.  His  more  than 
friendly  association  with  Irving  at  Kirkcaldy  in  the 
years  18 16,  1817,  and  181 8,  had  no  effect  in  inclining 
him  in  this  direction,  or  in  obviating  the  '  grave  pro- 
hibitive doubts '  which  had  already  arisen  in  his  mind. 
On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  have  been  in  Kirkcaldy 
that  these  doubts  strengthened  into  a  resolve  to  give 
up  all  idea  of  the  Christian  ministry :  He  had  found 
Gibbon's  History  in  Irving's  library/  and  eagerly 
devoured  it  with  negative  results.  Yet  schoolmaster- 
ing  was  also  intolerable  to  him,  and  so  he  found  his 
way  back  to  Edinburgh  in  18 19,  to  try  the  Law 
classes,  but  really  to  subsist  by  private  teaching  and 
occasional  employment  on  the  Edinburgh  Encyclo- 
p(2dia,  given  him  by  the  Editor,  afterwards  Sir 
David  Brewster. 

The  character  of  Carlyle's  doubts  will  appear  more 
fully  in  the  sequel.  We  may  only  remark  now  that 
there  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  at  this  or  any  future 
time  fully  studied  the  evidences  of  the  divine  origin 
of  Christianity.     The  very  idea  of  such  evidences  was 

^  Early  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  52. 
M 


178       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

always  repulsive  to  him.  But  there  had  gradually 
grown  upon  him  the  conviction  that  the  Christianity 
of  the  Church  was  '  intellectually  incredible,'  and  that 
he  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  He  has  told 
us  himself  how  he  disclosed  to  Edward  Irving  the 
great  change  which  had  taken  place  in  his  mind  on 
the  subject. 

He  had  been  to  Glasgow,  where  Irving  was 
then  assisting  Dr.  Chalmers  in  the  spring  of  1820, 
and  had  some  friendly  conference  with  Chalmers, 
who  was  full,  he  says,  of  a  new  scheme  for  proving  the 
truth  of  Christianity.  '  All  written  in  us  already  in 
sympathetic  ink ;  Bible  awakens  it,  and  you  can 
read.'  The  fact  dwelt  in  his  memory,  but  it  had  not 
touched  his  heart,  or  brought  him  any  light.  The 
'  sympathetic  ink '  in  his  case  would  not  take  effect. 
And  when  the  time  came  for  his  return  to  Annandale, 
he  describes  how  Irving  accompanied  him  fifteen  miles 
of  the  road,  and  how  they  sat  among  the  '  peat  hags ' 
of  Drumclog  moss,  '  under  the  silent  bright  skies,' 
with  '  a  world  all  silent  around  them.'  As  they  sat  and 
talked,  their  own  voices  were  'the  one  sound.'  Ailsa 
Craig  towered  *  white  and  visible,'  away  in  the  distance. 
Their  talk  had  grown  ever  friendlier,  and  more 
interesting.  At  length  the  declining  sun  said  plainly. 
You  must  part.  '  We  sauntered,'  he  says,  '  slowly  into 
the  highway.  Masons  were  building  at  a  wayside 
cottage  near  by,  or  were  packing  up  on  ceasing  for  the 
day.  We  leant  our  backs  on  a  dry  stone  fence,  and 
looking  into  the  western  radiance,  continued  to  talk 
yet  a  while,  loth  both  of  us  to  go.  It  was  just  here  as 
the  sun  was  sinking,  Irving  actually  drew  from  me  by 
degrees  in  the  softest  manner  the  confession  that  I 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   1 79 

did  not  think  as  he  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
that  it  was  vain  for  me  to  expect  I  ever  could  or 
should.  This,  if  this  was  so,  he  had  pre-engaged 
to  take  well  from  me ;  like  an  elder  brother  if  I 
would  be  frank  with  him,  and  right  royally  he 
did  so,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  we  needed  no 
concealments  on  that  head,  which  was  really  a  step 
gained.' 

For  a  time — apparently  not  more  than  two  years — 
Carlyle's  state  of  mind  was  one  of  great  unhappiness, 
in  which  the  foundations  not  only  of  Christianity,  but 
of  all  natural  religion,  seemed  shaken  within  him. 
'  Doubt  darkened  into  unbelief,'  '  shade  over  shade,' 
until  there  was  nothing  but  '  the  fixed  starless 
Tartarean  dark.'  He  was  very  miserable,  and  he  cried 
out  in  his  misery,  '  Is  there  no  God  then  ?  Has  the 
word  Duty  no  meaning  ?  Is  what  we  call  duty  no 
Divine  messenger  and  guide,  but  a  false  earthly  phan- 
tasm, made  up  of  desire  and  fear?  '  But  even  in  his 
worst  darkness  the  ideas  of  God  and  of  Duty  survived, 
in  a  fluctuating  way,  in  his  mind.  The  language 
which  he  used  in  his  letters  during  the  same  period 
both  to  his  father  and  mother,  leaves  this  beyond 
doubt.  It  was  his  constant  assurance  to  his  mother, 
that  his  opinions,  although  clothed  in  a  different 
garb,  were  at  bottom  analogous  with  her  own.  There 
were  times  no  doubt  when  he  felt  differently  and 
seemed  to  lose  hold  of  all  truth.  There  was  a 
deeper  despair — and  then  some  lightening  of  the 
clouds  before  true  light  and  peace  came.  It  was 
not,  we  shall  see,  till  1826,  after  his  first  return  from 
London,  that  he  was  able,  in  his  own  language, 
*  authentically  to  take  the  devil  by  the  nose.' 


1 80       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

He  has  himself  described  in  mystical  guise  in  Sartor 
Resartus  the  beginning   of    his   spiritual  deliverance. 
The  incident  is  told  in  the  close  of  the  seventh  chapter 
of  Book    II.,   and    he    says    it    literally  occurred  to 
himself — only  we  have  to  substitute  Leith  Walk  for 
the  Rue  Saint-Thomas  de  I'Enfer.     It  was  during  the 
summer  of  1821,  after  three  weeks  of  total  sleepless- 
ness, in  which  his  one  solace  was  that  of  a  daily  bathe 
on   the  sands  between  Leith  and  Portobello.     Long 
afterwards  he  said  he  could  go  straight  to  the  place. 
The  incident  happened  as  he  went  down  to  bathe.    As 
he  went  on  his  way  in  gloomy  meditation,  '  all  things 
in  the  Heavens  above  and  the  Earth  beneath '  seemed 
'  to  hurt '  him.    The  day  was  intolerably  sultry,  and  the 
pavement  '  hot  as  Nebuchadnezzar's   Furnace.'     Sud- 
denly the  thought  came  to  him,  "  '  What  art  thou  afraid 
of?  Wherefore,  like  a  coward,  dost  thou  for  ever  pip 
and  whimper,  and  go  cowering  and  trembling?  Despic- 
able biped !  what  is  the  sum-total   of  the  worst  that 
lies  before  thee  ?     Death?    Well,  death;  and  say  the 
pangs  of  Tophet  too,  and  all  that  the  Devil  and  Man 
may,  will  or  can  do  against  thee !     Hast  thou   not  a 
heart ;  canst  thou  not  suffer  whatsoever  it  be ;  and, 
as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  outcast,  trample  Tophet 
itself  under  thy  feet,  while  it  consumes  thee  ?     Let  it 
come,  then;   I  will  meet  it  and  defy  it."     And  as  I  so 
thought,  there  rushed  like  a  stream  of  fire  over  my 
whole  soul ;  and  I  shook  base  Fear  away  from  me  for 
ever.      I  was  strong,  of  unknown  strength ;  a  spirit, 
almost  a  god.     Ever  from  that  time,  the  temper  of  my 
misery  was  changed  :  not  Fear  or  whining  Sorrow  was 
it  but  Indignation  and  grim  fire-eyed  Defiance.    .  .  . 
Then   it  was  that  my  whole  me  stood  up,  in  native 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   i8i 

God-created  majesty.  .  .  .  The  Everlasting  No  had 
said,  '  Behold,  thou  art  fatherless,  outcast,  and  the 
Universe  is  mine  (the  Devil's) ;  "  to  which  my  whole 
ME  now  made  answer :  "  I  am  not  thine,  but  Free, 
and  for  ever  hate  thee."  From  this  hour  I  incline  to 
date  my  Spiritual  New-birth.' 

There  is  no  more  significant  passage  in  all  Carlyle's 
writings.  It  was  written  long  after  the  event — nearly 
ten  years — but  it  expresses  beyond  doubt  a  great 
change  in  his  mode  of  thought.  His  fears  and  doubts 
were  henceforth  cast  behind  him,  and  a  clear  light  of 
spiritual  conviction  began  to  dawn  within  him.  His 
full  deliverance  was  not  yet,  but  the  incident  in 
Leith  Walk  was  its  beginning.  Five  years  afterwards 
the  consummation  came  during  a  happy  summer 
that  he  spent  in  a  cottage  of  his  own,  not  far  from 
his  father's  farm.  There  he  succeeded  in  chaining 
up,  finally,  the  spiritual  '  dragons '  that  had  tor- 
mented him,  and  attaining  to  what  he  called  his 
conversion.  It  was  nothing  less  in  his  view.  '  I 
found  it,'  he  says,  '  to  be  essentially  what  Methodist 
people  call  their  conversion — the  deliverance  of  their 
souls  from  the  devil  and  the  pit.  Precisely  that  in  a 
new  form.  And  there  burnt,  accordingly,  a  sacred 
flame  of  joy  in  me,  silent  in  my  inmost  being,  as  of 
one  henceforth  superior  to  fate.  This  "  holy  joy " 
lasted  sensibly  in  me  for  several  years,  in  blessed 
counterpoise  to  sufferings  and  discouragements 
enough ;  nor  has  it  proved  what  I  can  call  fallacious 
at  any  time  since.' 

It  is  difficult  to  know  how  far  Carlyle's  language 
here,  and  in  many  places,  is  to  be  taken  literally, 
especially  when  speaking  of  himself     No  Methodist 


1 82       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

— not  even  John  Bunyan — clothes  his  spiritual  ex- 
periences in  more  highly  metaphorical  phrase.  His 
imagination  bodies  forth  his  sufferings,  more  rarely 
his  joys,  in  figures  of  intensity  and  magnitude  alto- 
gether disproportionate  to  the  experience  of  ordi- 
nary men.  The  transformation  of  Leith  Walk  in 
all  its  prosaic  ugliness,  into  the  Rue  de  I'Enfer,  is 
merely  one  among  many  instances  of  this  power  of 
imaginative  exaggeration.  '  Dragons  '  and  '  Tophet,' 
'  Eternities,'  '  Silences,'  '  Immensities,'  are  the  familiar 
imagery  of  his  mind.  He  sees  everything  trans- 
figured in  a  halo  of  gloom  or  of  sunshine.  The 
truth  seems  to  be  that  on  this  occasion  peace  of  mind 
came  to  him  largely  from  a  temporary  access  of  health. 
The  summer  of  1826,  spent  in  his  own  cottage  on 
Hoddam  Hill,  with  his  mother  at  command  to  attend 
to  his  wants,  and  set  free  from  the  distractions  of  the 
paternal  farm,  seems  almost  to  have  been  the  happiest 
portion  of  his  life.  He  had  room ;  he  had  work ; 
the  translation  of  German  Romance,  which  cost  him 
little  trouble,  and  brought  in  some  money.  The  view 
from  his  cottage  over  the  Solway  Firth  was  unrivalled 
in  extent  and  grandeur.  No  other  residence  seems 
to  have  suited  him  so  well,  and  it  was  one  of  the  mis- 
fortunes of  his  life  that  he  was  unable  to  retain  it. 
There  was  freedom,  occupation,  a  wild  Irish  pony 
on  which  to  gallop,  and  roads,  '  smooth  and  hard,'  to 
his  taste ;  '  ample  space  to  dig  and  prune  under 
the  pure  canopy  of  a  wholesome  sky.'  It  was  here 
Miss  Welsh  visited  his  mother,  and  may  be  said  to 
have  definitely  sealed  her  fate.  The  story  of  her 
visit,  and  all  that  followed,  is  beautifully  told.  He 
grew  for  a  time  strong  in  health  in  the  midst  of  such 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   183 

inspirations, — with  simple  food,  and  quiet  restful 
nights.  This  was  the  true  explanation  of  his  spiritual 
triumph,  of  his  taking  the  devil  so  effectually  by  the 
nose  at  this  time.  These  years,  he  tells  us,  lay  in 
his  memory  as  a  '  russet-coated  idyll ;  one  of  the 
quietest  on  the  whole,  and  perhaps  the  most  triumph- 
antly important  of  my  life.  I  lived  very  silent, 
diligent,  had  long  solitary  rides  on  my  wild  Irish 
horse,  Larry,  good  for  the  dietetic  part.  My  medi- 
tatings,  musings,  and  reflections  were  continual ; 
my  thoughts  went  wandering  or  travelling  through 
eternity,  and  were  now,  to  my  infinite  solacement, 
coming  back  with  tidings  to  me.  This  year  I  found 
I  had  conquered  all  my  scepticisms,  agonising  doubts, 
fearful  wrestlings  with  the  foul,  vile,  and  soul-mad- 
dening Mud-Gods  of  my  Epoch, — had  escaped  as  from 
a  worse  than  Tartarus,  with  all  its  Phlegethons  and 
Stygian  quagmires,  and  was  emerging  free  in  spirit 
into  the  eternal  blue  of  Ether.' ^ 

Had  Carlyle  only  been  able  to  dwell  on  the  top 
of  Hoddam  Hill  with  some  fair  portion  of  this  world's 
goods,  and  his  strong  peasant  mother,  who  knew  all 
his  ways,  to  minister  to  his  wants,  instead  of  the  deli- 
cate lady  whom  he  made  his  wife,  we  might  have 
heard  less  of  '  dragons  '  and  *  Stygian  quagmires.' 
As  it  was,  the  spiritual  happiness  of  this  year  so  far 
remained  with  him.  Ever  since,  he  says,  he  had 
dwelt  comparatively  in  the  clear  heaven,  looking  down 
upon  the  '  welterings  '  of  his  poor  fellow-creatures 
below,  and  having  no  concern  in  '  their  PuSeyisms, 
ritualisms,  metaphysical  controversies,  and  cobweb- 
beries — no  feeling  of  my  own,  except  honest  silent 

'  Reminiscences,  vol.  i.  p.  286. 


1 84       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

pity  for  the  serious  or  religious  part  of  them,  and 
occasional  indignation  for  the  world's  sake  at  the 
frivolous,  secular,  and  impious  part,  with  their  univer- 
sal suffrages,  their  nigger  Emancipations,  sluggard  and 
scoundrel  protection  societies,  and  unexampled  pros- 
perities for  the  time  being.  What  my  pious  joy  and 
gratitude  then  was  let  the  pious  soul  figure.  ...  I 
had  in  effect  gained  an  immense  victory,  and  for  a 
number  of  years,  in  spite  of  nerves  and  chagrins, 
had  a  constant  inward  happiness  that  was  quite  royal 
and  supreme.  .  .  .  Once  more,  thank  Heaven  for  its 
highest  gift.  I  then  felt,  and  still  feel,  endlessly  in- 
debted to  Goethe  in  the  business.  .  .  .  Nowhere  can 
I  recollect  of  myself  such  pious  musings,  communings, 
silent  and  spontaneous  with  fact  and  nature,  as  in 
these  poor  Annandale  localities.  The  sound  of  the 
kirk  bell  once  or  twice  on  Sunday  mornings  (from 
Hoddam  Kirk,  about  a  mile  on  the  plains  below  me) 
was  strangely  touching,  like  the  departing  voice  of 
eighteen  centuries.'^ 

This  is  a  charming  picture  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  the  date  of  this  new  birth-time  of  spiritual  life 
in  Carlyle.  It  is  a  date,  as  we  have  seen  already, 
fertile  in  religious  thought.  At  centres  wide  apart, 
and  tending  to  very  different  issues,  the  Divine 
impulse  was  moving  many  minds  in  those  years — 
Coleridge,  Arnold,  Milman,  Thirlwall,  Newman, 
Erskine,  Macleod  Campbell.  The  higher  visions  of 
Truth  that  then  came  to  Carlyle  were  to  himself 
certainly  of  the  nature  of  Divine  inspiration ;  and 
the  creative  moments  were  ever  afterwards  among 
the    brightest   of  his   existence.       His   better   health 

1  Reminiscences,  vol.  i.  p.  286. 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   185 

concurred  with  the  inspirations  of  the  year,  and 
was  a  more  important  factor  in  the  result  than  he 
himself  realised;  but  the  time  was  also  big  with 
spiritual  excitement;  and  the  Divine  afflatus  came 
to  him  as  to  others  amidst  his  silent  wanderings 
and  communings  with  nature. 

This     year — 1826 — with    its    'rustic     dignity   and 
beauty,'   passed   for   Carlyle  too   rapidly  away.       He 
was  back  at  his  father's  house  at  Mainhill  before  it 
was  out.     Nay,  before  the  last  month  of  autumn  was 
yet  finished,  he  was  married — after  no  end  of  negotia- 
tion— and   settled  at  Comely  Bank;    and   then,  two 
years  later,  he  was  at  Craigenputtock,  '  the  dreariest 
spot  in  all  the  British  dominions.'     His  life  there — his 
disappointments,  and  weary  work   at   article-writing, 
his  encouraging  letters  from   Goethe,  and  his  compo- 
sition   of    Sartor   Resartus — are    all    written    in    Mr. 
Froude's  volumes.      With  Sartor  Resartus    Carlyle's 
message  to  the  world  may  be  said  to  have  begun.      It 
was   composed  at  Craigenputtock   in   1831,  given   to 
the  world    in    Frasers    Magazine   in    1833,   but    not 
published  separately  till    1838.       The    story  of  his 
attempts  to  find  a  publisher,  his  interviews  with   Mr. 
Murray  and  Messrs.  Longman,  make  a  series  of  pitiful 
adventures,  all   very  pathetic.     We  cannot  wonder  at 
the  difficulties  he  encountered,  for  the  world  has  ever 
been   slow  to  recognise   new  prophets,    and    Carlyle 
assumed  in  Sartor  the  role  of  a  prophet.    It  was  written 
with   his   heart's  blood, — a  wild   and   solemn  sorrow 
'  running  through  its   sentences  like  the   sound   over 
the  strings  of  an   ^olian  harp.'       In   this  book,  too, 
for    the     first    time,    he    assumed    his    characteristic 
style.     The  new  message  seemed  to  demand  a  new 


1 86       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

language ;  and  Teufelsdrockh  poured  forth  his  wait- 
ings and  his  aspirations  in  words  that  caused  the 
ears  to  tingle,  if  not  exactly  in  the  sense  Carlyle 
meant. 

Carlyle's  style,  it  is  needless  to  say,  has  been  much 
criticised.  To  writers  like  Macaulay  and  Jeffrey  it  was 
intolerable ;  and  Jeffrey  did  not  hesitate  to  bid  him 
'  fling  away  his  affectations,  and  write  like  his  famous 
countrymen  of  all  ages.'  A  strange,  and  we  think 
erroneous,  suggestion  has  been  made  recently  that 
he  adopted 'a  studied  and  ambiguous  phraseology' 
with  a  view  to  conceal  opinions  which  would  have 
been  fatal  to  his  success  as  a  writer.  The  public,  it 
is  said,  '  put  their  own  interpretation  on  his  mystical 
utterances,  and  gave  him  the  benefit  of  any  doubts.' 
Not  only  is  there  no  evidence  of  such  an  intention 
in  Carlyle,  but  in  point  of  fact  his  peculiar  style, 
instead  of  in  any  degree  helping  the  circulation  of 
his  opinions,  undoubtedly  retarded  it.  Carlyle,  more- 
over, was  so  far  from  having  any  such  object  in  view 
that  his  style  is  nowhere  so  obscure  and  mystical 
as  in  fragments  written  for  his  own  eyes  alone.  The 
truth  plainly  is,  that  Carlyle's  style  was  partly 
modelled  on  that  of  Jean  Paul  Richter  among  his 
favourite  studies  at  this  time,^  and  partly  a  natural 
growth  of  his  mind  as  he  wrestled  with  the  problems 
of  the  universe,  and  fought  himself  free  from  the 
dragons  and  the  dismal  abysses  of  Tartarus.  It  is 
only  when  he  takes  up  his  prophetic  message  that  he 
fully  dons,  so  to  speak,  the   prophet's   mantle.       His 

*  His  famous  study  of  Jean  Paul  in  the  Foreign  Revunv  belongs  to 
1830  He  had  previously  written  on  the  same  subject  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review  in  1827. 


TJiomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   187 

translations  of  the  Wilhebn  Meister,  and  his  Life  of 
Schiller,  were  written  mainly  in  the  current  style  of  his 
time,  and  even  his  article  on  Burns,  in  1828,  is  com- 
paratively simple  in  style,  although  Jeffrey  objected 
to  its  diffuseness  and  length  for  the  Edinburgh  Review. 
Carlyle  was  not  the  man,  either  privately  or  as  a 
writer,  to  mask  his  opinions  in  a  feigned  style,  or  to 
deliberately  design  to  mystify  his  readers.  The 
mystification,  if  any,  lies  in  the  character  of  the 
message,  as  well  as  in  the  language  in  which  it  is 
conveyed. 

The  twenty  years  or  so  that  followed  the  publica- 
tion of  Sartor  Rcsartus  mark  the  era  of  Carlyle's 
chief  influence.  He  was  of  course  a  great  name  long 
after  this.  But  his  prophetic  phase  culminated  with 
the  Life  of  Sterling  in  185 1.  From  this  time  people 
ceased  to  look  to  him  as  a  religious  teacher.  He 
passed  into  the  literary  patriarch — the  great  Father 
of  contemporary  letters,  under  which  aspect  an  in- 
creasing veneration  gathered  around  his  name,  receiving 
perhaps  its  most  memorable  expression  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Rectorship  of  1 866,  and  the  enthusiastic  welcome 
which  was  then  given  him  by  the  students  and  public. 
He  was  at  this  time  seventy-one  years  of  age,  a  truly 
venerable  figure,  bearing  in  his  worn  and  sad,  yet 
heroic,  face  the  impress  of  all  the  struggles  he  had 
gone  through.  And  as  he  appeared  surrounded  with 
many  new  and  some  old  faces — among  the  latter  that 
of  his  friend  Mr.  Erskine  from  Linlathen,  like  him- 
self a  striking  figure  in  his  old  age — the  sight  was 
both  a  grand  and  touching  one.  Many  warmed  to 
the  '  heart-worn  '  old  man  as  they  listened  with  beating 
hearts  to  his  words  but  faintly  caught  at  times,  and 


1 88       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

heard  from  his  own  lips  the  lessons  of  his  life.^  '  There 
was  not  a  word  in  his  speech/  Mr.  Froude  says,  'which 
he  had  not  already  said,  and  said  far  more  forcibly, 
a  hundred  times.  But  suddenly  and  thenceforward, 
till  his  death  set  them  off  again,  hostile  tongues 
ceased  to  speak  against  him  as  hostile  pens  to  write. 
The  speech  was  printed  in  full  in  half  of  the  news- 
papers in  the  island.  It  was  received  with  universal 
acclamation.  A  low-priced  edition  of  his  works  be- 
came in  demand,  and  they  flew  into  a  strange  tem- 
porary popularity  with  the  reading  multitude.  Sartor, 
"  poor  beast,"  had  struggled  into  life  with  difficulty, 
and  its  readers  since  had  been  few,  if  select.  Twenty 
thousand  copies  of  the  shilling  edition  were  now  sold 
instantly  on  its  publication.  It  was  now  admitted 
universally  that  Carlyle  was  a  "  great  man."  Yet  he 
saw  no  inclination,  not  the  slightest,  to  attend  to  his 

1  I  may  be  pardoned  for  mentioning  here  that  I  happened  to  be  the 
first  to  convey  to  Mrs.  Carlyle  the  personal  assurance  of  the  splendid 
reception  which  her  husband  received  on  this  occasion.  I  left  Edin- 
burgh on  the  evening  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  address  on  a  visit  to  Mrs. 
Oliphant,  at  Windsor,  where  I  found  Mrs.  Carlyle  among  Mrs. 
OHphant's  visitors.  I  had  some  acquaintance  before  both  with  her  and 
her  illustrious  husband.  She  was  of  course  greatly  interested  in  what 
I  was  able  to  tell  her  about  the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  students 
had  received  Mr.  Carlyle;  and  made  us  all  (Mrs.  Oliphant,  Mrs.  Tul- 
loch,  and  myself)  promise  to  visit  her  a  few  days  later  at  Cheyne  Row 
to  meet  Mr.  Froude,  as  mentioned  by  him  in  his  concluding  volume, 
p.  34.  In  fulfilment  of  our  engagement  we  were  on  our  way  to  Cheyne 
Row  when  we  observed  Mr.  Froude  run  hastily  along  the  street  in  the 
direction  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  house  ;  and  we  then  learned  for  the  first  time 
the  sad  news  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  sudden  death.  It  was  a  terrible  shock  to 
all,  and  the  incident  remains  engraven  on  one's  memory.  She  had 
been  bright  beyond  measure  at  Windsor,  elated  by  her  husband's 
triumph — dealing  wittily  but  kindly  with  many  things,  and  glancing 
with  playful  sallies  at  Carlyle  himself  and  his  ways. 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   189 

teaching.  He  himself  could  not  make  it  out,  but  the 
explanation  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  Edinburgh 
Address  contained  his  doctrines,  with  the  fire  which 
had  provoked  the  animosity  taken  out  of  them. 
They  were  reduced  to  the  level  of  Church  sermons  ; 
thrown  into  general  propositions  which  it  is  pretty 
and  right  and  becoming  to  confess  with  our  lips,  while 
no  one  is  supposed  to  act  on  them.  We  admire  and 
praise  the  beautiful  language,  and  we  reward  the 
performance  with  a  bishopric  if  the  speaker  be  a 
clergyman.  Carlyle,  people  felt  with  a  sense  of  relief, 
meant  only  what  the  preachers  meant,  and  was  a  fine 
fellow  after  all.'  ^ 

So  far  Mr.  Froude.  The  cynical  allusions  are 
after  his  manner,  and  need  not  concern  us.  The 
truth  is  that  there  now  happened  to  Carlyle  what 
more  or  less  falls  to  all  writers  of  distinction.  His 
name,  as  the  favourite  of  the  Edinburgh  students, 
was  for  the  time  '  up.'  It  drew  a  widespread  general 
attention,  and  his  writings  inevitably  grew  in  tem- 
porary popularity  with  his  name.  But  Carlyle,  we 
fancy,  was  too  wise  a  man  to  concern  himself  much 
with  such  a  result.  He  could  not  well  have  imagined 
that  a  popularity  of  this  kind  was  likely  to  extend 
the  real  influence  of  his  teaching,  which  had  reached 
its  height  some  time  before.  The  freshness  of  his 
doctrines  was  past.  The  generation  which  had  been 
deeply  moved  by  Sartor  Resartiis,  and  the  lectures  on 
Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,  was  growing  to  maturity. 
The  Life  of  Sterling,  with  all  its  beauty  and  interest 
as  a  composition,  had  repelled  many — and  rightly  so. 
It  was  felt  to  be  offensive  to  the  Churches  and  to 
1  Froude,  vol.  ii.  [Carlyle' s  Later  Life),  pp.  306-7. 


190      Movements  of  Religious  TJwught. 

doctrines  independent  of  all  Churches,  and  to  reveal 
a  bitterness  which  is  never  near  to  wisdom.  The 
Edinburgh  enthusiasm  was  a  tribute  to  the  man 
of  letters  rather  than  to  the  prophet  of  any  doctrine 
whatever.  And  it  was  all  the  truer  and  higher  tribute 
on  this  account.  Carlyle  will  be  remembered  in 
literature  when  his  'philosophy  of  clothes,'  and  all  his 
philosophy,  is  forgotten. 

But  let  us  now  try  to  estimate  his  position  as  a 
thinker.  What  were  those  '  doctrines'  of  which  Mr. 
Froude  speaks,  or  in  other  words  the  'message'  which 
the  prophet  himself  thought  he  bore  to  his  genera- 
tion ?  There  are  two  ways  in  which  we  may  consider 
this  question.  First  of  all  we  may  ask  what  was  the 
general  influence  of  Carlyle  as  a  writer,  and  then 
what,  so  far  as  we  can  make  out,  were  the  contents  of 
his  '  message,'  or  the  principles  of  conviction  under- 
lying all  his  teaching  ?  The  two  questions  are  closely 
connected,  and  indeed  hardly  separable.  But  it  will 
be  convenient  to  look  at  them  in  succession. 

I.  Carlyle  spoke  with  two  different  voices  about 
literature.  As  a  profession  he  held  it  in  contempt. 
He  has  no  words  too  hard  for  the  poor  literary  man, 
in  London  or  elsewhere.  '  Good  Heavens,'  he  says, '  and 
is  this  the  literary  world — this  rascal  rout,  the  dirty 
rabble,  destitute  not  only  of  large  feeling  and  know- 
ledge or  intellect,  but  even  of  common  honesty.  They 
are  not  red-blooded  men  at  all.  They  are  only 
things  for  writing  articles.'  But  at  other  times  he 
spoke  of  literature  with  divine  enthusiasm.  The 
writer  of  a  true  book  was  the  real  '  Primate  of  Eng- 
land and  of  all  England.'  '  Literature,  so  far  as  it  is 
literature,    is   an  Apocalypse    of  Nature.      The  dark 


Thomas  Caj'lyie  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   191 

scornful  indignation  of  a  Byron,  so  wayward  and 
perverse,  may  bear  touches  of  the  god-like ;  nay  the 
withered  mockery  of  a  French  Sceptic — his  mockery 
of  the  false  alone,  and  worship  of  the  true;  how  much 
more  the  sphere  harmony  of  a  Shakespeare  and  a 
Goethe ;  the  cathedral  music  of  a  Milton  ;  the  humble 
genuine  larknotes  of  a  Burns — skylark  starting  from 
the  humble  furrow  far  overhead  into  the  blue  depths, 
and  singing  to  us  so  genuinely  there.'  Even  writers  of 
newspapers,  more  frequently  objects  of  his  scorn,  are 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  '  the  real  working  effective 
Church  of  a  modern  country.' 

The  world's  final  judgment  upon  Carlyle,  we  feel 
certain,  will  be  that  he  was  himself  above  all  a  man 
of  letters.  He  had  the  graphic  faculty  more  than 
any  other.  He  could  not  help  putting  pen  to  paper. 
The 'pictured  page 'came  forth  from  him  naturally, 
and  grew  under  his  hand  irresistibly — yet  always 
under  the  impulse  of  a  high  ideal.  This  is  the 
explanation  of  the  different  ways  in  which  he  speaks 
— or  at  least  it  is  the  chief  explanation — for  no  doubt 
also  mere  mood  sometimes  swayed  him.  Literature 
was  to  him  '  the  wine  of  life.'  It  should  not  be 
converted  '  into  daily  food.'  Above  all,  it  must  not 
be  confounded  with  the  *  froth  ocean  of  printed 
speech,  which  we  loosely  call  literature.'  This 
must  be  said  for  Carlyle — no  less  than  for  Milton, — 
that  he  never  ceased  to  claim  a  high  ideal  for  litera- 
ture, and  to  vindicate  for  its  theme  '  whatsoever  in 
religion  is  holy  and  sublime,  and  in  virtue  amiable 
and  grave.' 

In  this  respect  Carlyle's  influence  has  been  good 
without  exception.   It  brought  an  element  of  thorough- 


192       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

ness,  of  depth  and  reality,  into  the  hterary  thought  of 
his  time  which  was  of  great  value.  It  did  so  in  more 
ways  than  one.  His  own  writings  were  all  more  or 
less  penetrating  and  earnest.  He  took  up  subjects 
from  the  inside  with  a  view  to  their  vital  comprehen- 
sion in  their  essential  and  not  merely  their  ordinary 
meaning.  His  papers  on  Burns,  on  Jean  Paul,  on 
Voltaire,  on  Novalis,  on  Samuel  Johnson,  as  well 
as  on  Goethe  and  others,  were  all  of  this  kind.  His 
famous  article  on  '  Characteristics,'  '  more  profound 
and  far-reaching  even  than  Sartor  itself,'  and  his 
previous  article  on  the  *  Signs  of  the  Times ' — both  in 
the  EdinbiirgJi  Reviezv}  were  also  of  the  same  stamp. 
His  style  of  work  is  better  illustrated  by  such  examples, 
because  they  do  not  raise,  so  directly,  the  question  of 
the  principles  underlying  his  general  works.  These 
principles  may  be  disputed ;  but  no  one  can  well 
dispute  that  the  themes  handled  by  Carlyle  in  these 
miscellanies  were  handled  with  a  soul  which  was 
new  in  the  literature  of  our  century.  Thoughtful 
readers  were  arrested  and  made  to  feel  that  they 
were  brought  face  to  face  with  spiritual  facts, 
with  the  realities  of  life  and  thought,  as  in  no  other 
writings  of  the  day.  This  was  of  the  nature  of  reli- 
gious influence, — more  truly  so  than  much  that  pro- 
fessed to  be  religion.  It  tended  to  deepen  thought, 
to  cleanse  the  spiritual  eye,  to  go  down  to  the  roots 
of  questions,  and  bring  their  complexities  into  some 
organic  shape.  Imperfectly  as  the  writer  was  still 
understood  in  his  earlier  years,  he  exercised  so  far  a 
vast  influence,  and  of  the  best  kind.  The  '  mysti- 
cism '  of  which  he  speaks   in   his  letters  of  this  time 

^  Signs  of  the  Times,  1829,     Characteristics,  1 83 1. 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.    193 

was  a  quickening  power  to  all  opening  minds.  One 
can  see  how  it  attracted  John  Stuart  Mill  when 
Carlyle  visited  London  in  1831  with  a  view  to  the 
publication  of  Sartor.  Different  as  was  their  point 
of  view,  and  widely  as  they  afterwards  separated,  Mill 
was  then  strongly  drawn  to  Carlyle,  as  Carlyle  was 
drawn  to  him.  He  tells  us  how 'the  enthusiastic 
yet  lucid  calm  youth  '  walked  home  with  him  the 
first  time  they  met,^  and  seemed  as  if  he  had  been 
'  converted  by  the  head  of  the  mystic  school'  Car- 
lyle indeed  soon  discovered  that  he  had  not  found 
'  another  mystic  '  in  Mill,  but  his  startling  intuition, 
his  intellectual  downrightness,  and  clear,  strong  grasp 
of  realities  made  an  obviously  great  impression  upon 
the  young  '  Spirit  of  the  age,'^  as  Carlyle  called  him. 
The  same  power  was  felt  by  others  even  thus  early, 
although  it  was  ten  years  afterwards  till  his  full 
influence  began  to  tell.  And  the  influence  thus  exer- 
cised was  largely  independent  of  his  special  doctrines. 
Whether  these  doctrines  were  true  or  not,  it  was  plain 
that  here  was  a  mind  of  rare  force — of  stern  truthful- 
ness— to  which  it  would  do  well  for  the  world  to  take 
heed.  And  the  result  was  undoubtedly  to  lift  many 
questions  not  only  of  literature  and  history,  but  of 
social,  moral,  political,  and  religious  importance,  into 
a  higher  atmosphere,  and  invest  them  with  a  higher 
meaning  than  heretofore. 

But  it  was  not  only  by  the  tone  and  spirit  of  his 
own  writings  that  Carlyle  accomplished  this  result. 
He  was  the  first  who  brought  home  to  the  British 
mind  the  great   storehouse    of  higher  thought  that 

1  September  1831. 

'  The  title  of  a  series  of  Articles  by  Mill  in  1831. 
N 


194       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

existed  in  the  literature  of  Germany.  Attempts 
had  been  made  in  the  same  direction  by  Taylor  of 
Norwich  in  his  Trans/ations  and  his  Survey  of  Ger- 
man Poetry,  which  is  now  however  chiefly  remem- 
bered from  Carlyle's  review,  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and 
by  Coleridge  ;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  treasures 
of  German  poetry  or  reflective  fiction  were  really 
known  in  this  country  before  Carlyle's  Life  of 
Schiller  and  his  translation  of  Wilhehn  Meister, 
and  his  articles  on  Richter  and  Goethe,  To  what 
extent  Carlyle  borrowed  his  own  so-called  '  mysti- 
cism '  from  Germany  need  not  be  considered.  He 
professed  himself,  as  all  know,  endlessly  indebted 
to  Goethe.  But  there  can  be  no  question  of  the 
extent  to  which  his  own  mind  was  stimulated  and 
enriched  by  Germanism.  Coleridge  had  drawn  wealth 
from  the  same  source,  chiefly  from  the  German 
philosophical  writers,  which  had  no  particular  attrac- 
tion for  Carlyle,  notwithstanding  the  paper  on 
Novalis ;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  anything  that 
Coleridge  had  done  in  this  way  had  spread  the  know- 
ledge of  German  thought  and  literature.  Carlyle 
for  the  first  time  made  us  alive  to  the  power,  beauty, 
and  genuine  depth  of  meaning  there  were  in  the 
great  German  poets  and  writers,  their  freer  and 
richer  views  of  life,  their  higher  and  more  compre- 
hensive canons  of  criticism.  In  this  knowledge  too 
there  was  an  element  of  religion.  Religious  aspira- 
tion was  seen  to  rest  on  a  wider  basis  than  our 
insular  narrowness  had  been  accustomed  to  place  it. 
It  was  acknowledged  as  a  powerful  element  in  all 
life — in  art,  in  speculation,  in  every  intellectual 
growth,     '  In  all  human  hearts  there  is  the   religious 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.    195 

fibre' ' — was  the  lesson  which  Carlyle  had  learned 
himself  and  preached  to  others.  No  human  product, 
and  least  of  all  literature,  can  be  divorced  from  re- 
ligion. This  was  a^  higher  and  better  view  of  litera- 
ture than  had  prevailed  during  the  eighteenth  and 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  liable 
no  doubt  to  abuse.  It  may  be  turned  by  literary 
libertinism  into  an  assertion  that  any  kind  of  religion 
is  good  enough — that  mere  sentimentalism  may  stand 
for  religion.  But  the  thought  in  itself  is  true  and 
valuable,  and  not  to  be  measured  by  its  abuse.  It 
both  elevates  humanity  and  enlarges  religion.  It 
claims  all  intellectual  activity  as  rightfully  belonging 
to  God  and  not  to  the  devil,  and  casts  over  it  a 
sacred  lustre.  It  brings  man  as  man  within  the  light 
of  the  Divine,  and  shows  him  in  his  truly  supernatural 
life — 'An  infinite  happiness  and  an  infinite  woe  not 
only  waiting  him  hereafter,  but  looking  out  upon  him 
through  every  pitifullest  present  good  or  evil.'  ^  This 
deeper  way  of  looking  at  human  nature  with  all  its 
products,  liable  to  loose  and  feeble  exaggeration  as  it 
may  be,  was  a  real  gain  to  the  higher  thought  of  the 
time.  It  was  a  true  advancement  of  literature.  It 
vindicated  a  wider  sphere  for  religion.  It  failed  to 
arrest  the  progress  of  the  mechanical  philosophy 
against  which  it  was  chiefly  directed ;  but  it  still 
operates  as  a  pregnant  force  in  British  thinking. 

But  we  must  consider  Carlyle's  religious  attitude 

*  Always  and  everywhere  this  remains  a  true  saying — '  II  y  a  dans 
le  coeur  humain  un  fibre  religieux.'  Man  always  worships  something. 
Always  he  sees  the  Infinite  shadowed  forth  in  something  finite. — 
Review  of  Goethe's  Works — Miscellanies,  vol.  iii. 

« Ibid. 


196       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

more    particularly.      What    were     his    own     special 
doctrines  ? 

Mr  Froude  speaks  repeatedly  of  Carlyle's  '  Creed,' 
and  of  the  effect  it  exercised  upon  himself  and  his 
contemporaries  in  the  agitating  years  in  which 
Puseyism  had  outrun  itself,  and  evangelicalism  as  a 
power  was  wellnigh  extinct.  These  were  the  years 
in  which  Mr,  Froude  himself  began  life  as  an  author, 
and  along  with  other  young  souls  was  'determined 
to  have  done  with  insincerity,  to  find  ground  under 
their  feet,  to  let  the  uncertain  remain  uncertain,  but 
to  learn  how  much  and  what  we  could  honestly 
regard  as  true.'  Tennyson  '  became  the  voice  of  this 
feeling  in  poetry.'  Carlyle  stood  beside  the  poet  as  a 
prophet  and  teacher,  and  his  words  were  'like  the 
morning  reveille '  to  the  new  searchers  after  truth. 
'  They  had  been  taught  to  believe  in  a  living  God. 
They  heard  of  what  he  had  done  in  the  past.  Carlyle 
was  the  first  to  make  us  see  his  actual  and  active 
presence  now  in  this  working  world.  To  know  God's 
existence  was  not  an  arguable  probability,  a  fact 
dependent  for  its  certainty  on  church  authority  or  on 
apostolic  succession,  or  on  so-called  histories,  which 
might  possibly  prove  to  be  no  more  than  legends ; 
but  an  awful  reality  to  which  the  fate — the  fate  of 
each  individual  man  bore  perpetual  witness.  Here, 
and  only  here,  lay  the  sanction  and  the  meaning  of  the 
word  duty.  We  were  to  do  our  work  because  we 
were  bound  to  do  it  by  our  Master's  orders.  We 
were  to  be  just  and  true  because  God  abhorred  wrong 
and  hated  lies.  Religious  teachers,  indeed,  had  said 
the  same  thing,  but  they  had  so  stifled  the  practical 
bearing  of  their  creed  under  their  doctrines  and  tradi- 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.    197 

tions  that  honest  men  had  found  a  difficulty  in  listen- 
ing to  them.  In  Carlyle's  writings  dogma  and  tradi- 
tion had  melted  hke  a  mist,  and  the  awful,  actual  fact 
burnt  clear  once  more  in  the  midst  of  heaven.'  As 
for  himself,  Froude  adds  that  he  was  saved  by  Carlyle's 
writings  'from  Positivism  or  Romanism  or  Atheism. 
The  alternatives  were  being  thrust  upon  us  of  believ- 
ing nothing  or  believing  everything,  or  worse  still,  of 
acquiescing  for  worldly  convenience  in  the  established 
order  of  things  which  had  been  made  intellectually 
incredible.  Carlyle  taught  me  a  creed  which  I  could 
then  accept  as  really  true  ;  which  I  have  held  ever 
since  with  increasing  confidence  as  the  interpreta- 
tion of  my  existence,  and  the  guide  of  my  conduct 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  act  up  to  it.  Then 
and  always  I  looked  and  have  looked  to  him  as  my 
master.'  ^ 

We  need  say  nothing  of  the  assumption  underlying 
this  passage  that  sincerity  was  a  supreme  if  not  ex- 
clusive note  of  the  band  of  young  truth-seekers  who 
in  those  years  (1842-4)  had  broken  loose  from  tradi- 
tionary and  historical  religion,  and  could  find  no  rest 
in  any  existing  form  of  Christianity.  The  talk  of 
sincerity  is  too  much  in  the  mouth  both  of  the  prophet 
and  his  disciple.  It  is  an  evil  weapon,  and  may  be 
turned  with  too  great  facility  many  ways.  We 
know  after  all  but  little  in  any  case — sometimes  even 
in  our  own  case — of  the  real  motives  and  state  of  mind 
underlying  religious  belief  or  unbelief  And  it  is  the 
wiser  as  well  as  the  humbler  course  to  credit  each 
other  with  sincerity,  save  when  conduct  and  belief 
are  in  too  glaring  contrast.     There  may  be  a  cant 

1  Later  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  291   et  seq. 


198       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

about  sincerity,  as  about  other  things,  and   it  comes 
near  to  being  this  when  used  thus  recklessly. 

Of  Carlyle's  deep  sincerity  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion. When  he  told  Irving,  under  the  '  western 
radiance'  on  Drumclog  Moor,  that  he  had  ceased  to 
think  of  the  Christian  religion  as  his  friend  did,  he 
was  evidently  moved  by  the  irresistible  honesty  of  his 
nature.  Then,  and  ever  afterwards,  he  found  himself 
unable  to  believe  in  Revelation,  'technically  so 
called' — a  revelation,  that  is  to  say,  supposed  to  be 
established  by  historical  miracles.  The  fullest  ex- 
pression of  his  disbelief  in  Christianity  is  to  be  found 
in  his  Life  of  Sterling ;  but  Mr.  Froude  has  published 
an  interesting  fragment  in  the  opening  of  the  second 
of  his  earlier  volumes  on  Carlyle's  Life,  bearing  on  the 
same  subject.^  In  this  fragment  he  explains,  in 
characteristic  fashion,  his  views  of  all  historical  reli- 
gions as  being  in  their  day  loyal  efforts,  according  to 
the  light  of  their  time,  to  explain  the  problem  of  the 
Universe,  and  the  reality  of  human  duty — efforts 
however,  in  their  very  nature,  neither  exhaustive  nor 
permanent.  For  a  time  they  seem  to  fill  the  whole 
orbit  of  spiritual  vision,  and  all  things  to  move 
in  harmony  with  their  contents.  But  the  Universe 
itself  is  greater  than  any  theory  that  can  be  formed 
about  it.  It  was  natural  for  the  Jewish  people  to 
fancy  that  'the  set  of  convictions'  which  they  had 
worked  out  for  themselves  were  of  universal  import, 
and  that  the  world  was  revolving  round  them,  while 
they  were  motionless,  as  a  centre.  But  in  their  case, 
as  in  others,  the  story  of  Galileo  and  the  Heavens 
applies — they  were  really  in  motion,  while  the  world 

^  Spiritual  Optics,  vol.  ii.  page  8,  et  seq. 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   199 

in  its  divine  beauty  was  still  and  peaceful  around 
them.  They,  no  more  than  others,  have  read  all  its 
meaning,  or  fixed  it  for  ever.  The  universe  itself,  and 
man  as  its  prime  figure,  form  the  true  Revelation. 
Religion  cannot  be  incarnated  and  settled  once  for 
all  in  forms  of  Creed  and  worship.  It  is  a  continual 
growth  in  every  living  heart — a  new  light  to  every 
seeing  eye.  Past  theologies  did  their  best  to  inter- 
pret the  laws  under  which  man  was  living,  and  to 
help  him  to  regulate  his  life  thereby.  But  the  laws 
of  God  are  before  us  always,  whether  promulgated  in 
Sinai  Thunder,  or  otherwise.  '  The  Universe  is  made 
by  law — the  great  Soul  of  the  world  is  just,  and  not 
unjust.  .  .  .  Rituals,  Liturgies,  Credos,  Sinai  Thunder, 
I  know  more  or  less  the  history  of  those — the  rise,  pro- 
gress, decline,  and  fall  of  these.  Can  thunder  from 
the  thirty-two  Azimuths  repeated  daily  for  centuries  of 
years  make  God's  laws  more  godlike  to  me  ?  Brother, 
No !  .  .  .  Revelation,  Inspiration,  yes,  and  thy  own 
God-created  soul :  dost  thou  not  call  that  a  Revelation? 
Who  made  thee  ?  Where  didst  thou  come  from  ? — 
the  voice  of  Eternity,  if  thou  be  not  a  blasphemer,  and 
poor  asphyxied  mute,  speaks  with  that  tongue  of 
thine.  Thou  art  the  latest  book  of  Nature  ;  it  is  the 
Inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth  thee  understand- 
ing, my  brother,  my  brother.'  ^  Again,  '  God  not  only 
made  us,  and  beholds  us,  but  is  in  us  and  around  us. 
The  age  of  miracles,  as  it  ever  was,  now  is.  .  .  .  This 
is  the  high  Gospel  begun  to  be  preached:  Man  is 
still  man  ! '  ^ 

It  is  evident  that  Carlyle's  repulsion  to  Christianity 

*  Past  and  Present,  pp.  307-9. 

*  '  Characteristics  ' — Miscellanies,  iii.  p.  32. 


200       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

arose  out  of  the  general  tendency  of  his  mind  to  throw 
aside  all  dead  forms  of  thought,  as  he  conceived  them 
to  be.  With  a  creative  imagination,  unexampled  almost 
in  the  history  of  literature,  his  highest  gift  was  yet 
strangely  limited.  He  could  make  the  dead  live  again 
in  feature  and  character — every  aspect  of  life,  society 
and  manner,  glow  upon  the  canvas  in  a  way  no  writer  of 
our  time,  or  perhaps  of  any  time,  ever  rivalled.  Lock- 
hart  said  that  he  excelled  every  one  in  this  respect, 
except  Scott.  Mr.  Froude,  and  many  will  agree  with 
him,  will  not  allow  the  exception.  But  with  all  this 
intense  imaginative  realism  in  the  description  of  facts 
— in  the  portraiture  of  character  and  events — he  had 
little  or  no  power  of  realising  systems  of  thought,  and 
recognising  what  is  great  and  still  living  in  them. 
Philosophies  and  theologies,  merely  because  they  are 
past,  are  all  dead  metaphysics — putrescent  stuff — to  be 
cast  out  and  trodden  under  foot.  Any  manifestation 
of  forceful  life — of  energetic  personality — in  the  past 
as  in  the  present,  interested  him — Luther,  Knox, 
Mohammed,  Samuel  Johnson,  Burns,  Edward  Irving, 
so  far;  but  movements  of  thought,  apart  from  the 
personalities  concerned  in  them — movements  which, 
after  their  first  life,  had  clothed  themselves  in  systems 
and  institutions,  he  nowhere  shows  a  capacity  of  un- 
derstanding, still  less  of  estimating  in  their  surviving 
life  and  power,  as  embodied  in  Institutions,  Churches, 
articles.  Liturgies,  or  other  symbols.  The  mere  fact 
that  they  were  no  longer  in  their  first  freshness,  but 
had  become  traditional,  implied  to  him  that  they 
were  dead,  and  that  there  was  no  more  good  in  them. 
With  all  his  historic  vision,  so  intense  of  its  kind, 
there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  saw  what  a  marvel- 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   201 

lous  and  exceptional  movement  Christianity  had 
been — what  hfe  still  stirred  in  it — what  an  historical 
as  well  as  spiritual  grandeur  there  was  in  the  Church 
— and  the  witness  it  still  was  for  a  living  God  in  the 
world.  He  could  not  accept  its  miraculous  frame- 
work ;  but  neither  could  he  accept  its  inner  spirit.  He 
was  too  obviously  repelled  by  the  essential  character 
of  its  teaching  as  a  Gospel  for  the  poor,  weak,  and 
sinful.  He  was  blind,  with  all  his  heroic  instincts, 
to  the  most  heroic  history  that  has  ever  been 
enacted  in  the  world.  Calvinism  was  to  him  respect- 
able, not  because  it  was  a  great  intellectual  or  theolo- 
gical phenomenon,  with  a  continuous  historical  life  of 
its  own,  but  because  it  was  the  faith  of  his  father  and 
mother,  and  he  saw  how  it  had  moved  them  with  the 
strong  hand  of  its  purity,  and  given  their  lives  a  cer- 
tain grandeur  and  stern  kind  of  beauty.  When  he 
talks  of  *  unbelievability,'  and  the  impossibility  of 
any  man  of  veracity  taking  up  with  traditional 
Christianity,  it  is  necessary  not  merely  to  say  that  he 
never  gave  the  subject  of  its  credibility  any  adequate 
attention ;  but  that  he  failed  to  understand  its  simple 
greatness  as  a  fact,  or  rather  a  great  procession  of 
facts — the  power  of  its  thought  in  moulding  human 
life  all  through  the  Christian  centuries — the  stamp  of 
tender  heroism  which  it  alone  still  gives  to  this  life. 
He  failed,  in  short,  on  this  side,  as  a  student  of  that 
very  human  nature  which  in  its  essential  elements 
was  to  him  professedly  Revelation,  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  dead  theologies  which  hung  around  it. 

But  opposed  as  Carlyle  was  thus  to  Christianity, 
he  was  still  more  opposed  to  Materialism  in  all  its 
forms.     This  is  evident  enough  in  his  writings,  vague 


202       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

as  they  often  are,  but  Mr.  Froude's  statements  place 
the  matter  beyond  all  doubt.  They  have  a  special 
value  as  professing  to  be  founded  on  much  per- 
sonal converse  with  him  during  his  last  years,  when 
his  thought  was  fully  matured  in  the  light  of  the 
successive  efforts  made  in  our  time  to  account  for 
man's  nature  by  materialistic  evolution.  All  such 
efforts  were  to  him  mere  '  mud  philosophies.'  *  God 
was  to  him  the  fact  of  facts.'  Again,  his  biographer 
says  Carlyle  '  was  a  Calvinist  without  the  theology. 
The  materialistic  theory  of  things — that  intellect  is 
a  phenomenon  of  matter,  that  conscience  is  the  growth 
of  social  convenience,  and  other  kindred  speculations, 
he  utterly  repudiated.  Scepticism  on  the  nature  of 
right  and  wrong,  or  on  man's  responsibility  to  his 
Maker,  never  touched  or  tempted  him.'  ^  He  dis- 
credited Christianity  as  a  professed  revelation  ;  but 
he  not  only  never  doubted  the  Divine  Government 
of  the  world, — it  may  be  said  that  all  his  writings, 
historical,  political,  and  biographical,  appealed  inces- 
santly to  this  Government  as  the  surest  reality  in  the 
Universe.  Opposition  to  it  and  to  the  plain  facts 
everywhere  witnessing  to  it,  was  the  explanation  of 
all  personal,  social,  and  political  corruption.  It  was 
even  because  in  his  view  religion,  as  represented  by 
the  Churches,  had  so  much  lost  sight  of  the  inexor- 
able Moral  law  lying  upon  all  human  life,  that  it 
had  lost  so  much  of  its  power,  and  had  become  dead 
and  useless  as  he  supposed.  There  was  never  a 
sterner  Apostle  of  Divine  Law  than  Carlyle,  or  any 
one  more  opposed  to  the  idea  of  a  Godless  world  in 
which  man  was  his  own  chief  end. 

*  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  2  (years  1795-1835)- 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   203 

But  strongly  as  Carlyle   seized  the  divine  side  of 
thino-s,  clearly  as   he   recognised  that  there  is  a  spirit 
in   man,  and    that   the    Almighty    alone    giveth    him 
understanding,  he    refused  to  look  steadily  at  spiritual 
as  distinct  from  natural  life.     There  is  a  lack  both  of 
reality    and    discrimination    in    his    conception.      His 
dualism  of  spirit  and  matter,   much  insisted  upon  in 
general  terms,  and  in  opposition  to  all  '  mud  philo- 
sophies,' had  a  constant  tendency  to  vanish  on  appli- 
cation.    Nature    and    man    were   divine  to   him   now 
and    here.     Nothing  is  more  touching  and    beautiful 
than  the  way  in  which  he  vindicates  the  divine  mean- 
ing of  all   nature,  the   simple   streamlet  or  Knhbach 
that     ran    by   the    home   of  his   childhood,   'flowing 
gurgling  from  beyond   the  earliest   date  of  History,' 
no    less   than  the  Jordan  or  Siloa  of  Scripture;  the 
lives  that   were   dear  to   his   heart   no   less  than   the 
lives    of  Patriarchs    or    Apostles.     All   in   idea  were 
sacred, — a    Revelation   to    him.     But   the    Divine   in 
Nature  and  in  Man — all-significant  in  Carlyle's  ima- 
gination— was    but  imperfectly  apprehended  by  him 
in  particular  fact.     Here   as   everywhere  to  him   the 
ideal    and    the    actual    failed    to    harmonise.     Nature 
was   before  his  eyes  at  Craigenputtock  no  less  than 
Hoddam   Hill ;  yet  the  former  was  a  God-forgotten 
wilderness — '  a    devil's    den '    when    he    was    out    of 
humour.     '  Man  was  still  man,' — Godlike, — but  man 
the  individual,  save  in  rare  instances,  was  intolerable 
to  him.     No  one  has  ever  written  more  eloquently  of 
man  in  the  universal,  and  abused  more  dreadfully  the 
individuals  with  whom  he  was  brought  in  contact. 

There  is  not  only  this  gap  between  the  ideal  and 
the  practical;  but  with  all  Carlyle's  talk  of  God, — 


204       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  the  Divine, — he  everywhere  shrinks  from  any  de- 
finition of  God  as  distinctively  moral.  There  is  every- 
where to  him  a  Divine  meaning.  But  what  does  this 
come  to  ?  '  Matter,  were  it  never  so  despicable,  is 
the  manifestation  of  spirit'  But  what  is  spirit?  What 
is  the  Divine  that  moves  in  all  things, — '  all  thinking 
things,  all  objects  of  all  thought '  ?  He  used  the 
common  name  of  God.  At  other  times  he  refused 
to  use  any  definite  name,  and  fell  back  upon  his 
well-known  '  Eternities,'  '  Immensities.'  He  veiled 
his  meaning  in  metaphors.  But  whether  he  did  this 
or  used  the  name  of  God  he  did  not  mean  what  the 
Christian  or  the  Theist  means  by  God.  He  did  not 
mean  a  Personal  Being,  judging  the  world  in  right- 
eousness ;  and  still  less  a  '  Father  in  heaven.'  He 
spoke  in  abundance  of  a  law  of  judgment, — of  a 
righteous  rule  that  will  not  let  the  wicked  go  un- 
punished. The  '  Veracities '  and  their  unfailing  sen- 
tences were  ever  in  his  mouth.  The  liar,  the  time- 
server — the  impostor  in  every  form — social,  political, 
or  religious — cannot  hope  to  escape.  There  is  laid 
up  for  all  such  a  fearful  looking  for  of  judgment, 
which  will  yet  crush  them  and  all  their  works.  Here 
there  is  in  full  force  the  Biblical,  or  Calvinist  element 
of  Carlyle's  early  education.  But  he  was  only  too 
good  a  Calvinist,  or  rather  he  took  up  merely  with  one 
side  of  Calvinism — the  side  which  emphasises  the 
bare  will,  the  naked  power  of  God.  He  could  not 
conceive  himself  made  save  by  a  being  who  had  a 
moral  sense  like  his  own.  But  he  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge a  Personal  Life  above  his  own  life,  a  Life  pitiful 
as  well  as  just,  Love  as  well  as  Law.  And  so  his 
idea   of  the    Divine   readily   sank   into   the   idea  of 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   205 

Supreme  Force.  He  scouted  the  materialist  who 
denied  spirit,  but  no  less  he  scouted  the  Christian 
who  sought  to  realise  the  relation  of  the  Supreme 
Spirit  to  himself  as  an  individual, — who  recognised 
the  idea  of  Personal  Love  as  the  only  adequate  con- 
ception of  Spirit.  He  delighted  in  the  vagueness 
which  lies  necessarily  in  this  higher  region,  and  clung 
to  it  with  scorn  of  all  who  would  give  to  the  Supreme 
a  more  concrete  meaning.  And  so  Spirit  with  him 
constantly  passes  into  Force,  Law  into  Might — 
Righteousness  into  mere  order.  The  world  is  divinely 
governed,  no  doubt;  but  a  Danton,  a  Cromwell, 
and  a  Frederick  the  Great  are  the  special  repre- 
sentatives and  executive  of  this  government.  It  is 
plain  that  the  Carlylean  and  the  Christian  ideas  of 
the  Divine  are  not  the  same.  When  it  is  right  to 
have  done  with  the  negro  at  whatever  hazard,  and 
to  clear  the  earth  of  wretches  by  whatever  process, 
you  feel  that  the  Divine  righteousness  to  which  he 
appeals  is  not  the  righteousness  of  the  Gospels.  It 
is  Calvinism  not  only  without  the  theology,  but 
without  the  morality  which  clung  to  it  in  the  religion 
of  his  youth.  It  is  a  Divine  kingdom — let  us  be 
thankful  for  Carlyle's  inflexible  insistence  that  there 
is  a  righteous  order  in  the  world  which  will  vindicate 
itself  against  all  deceptions  and  evasions  of  man — 
but  a  Divine  kingdom  without  mercy  for  the  penitent 
or  pardon  for  the  guilty — an  Order  of  judgment 
girdling  the  earth  rather  than  a  Father's  Love  seek- 
ing the  sinner  while  condemning  his  sin. 

Upon  the  whole  we  may  venture  to  sum  up  the 
relation  of  Carlyle's  teaching  to  Christianity  as  fol- 
lows.    It   was    negative    in    the    following  points : — 


2o6       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

(i.)  In  denial  of  miracle;^  (2.)  in  denial  of  the 
Divine  Personality;  and  (3.)  in  his  disposition  to 
exalt  strength, — to  set  forth  the  mighty  in  intellect 
and  character  rather  than  the  '  poor  in  spirit,' — as  the 
Divine  ideal.  On  the  other  hand,  his  teaching  had 
an  affinity  with  Christianity — (i.)  In  his  continual 
assertion  of  a  Divine  Power  behind  all  matter ;  (2.) 
his  representation  of  man  as  the  offspring  of  such  a 
Divine  Power  or  Being ;  (3.)  his  earnestness  on 
behalf  of  a  Moral  Law  or  eternal  distinction  between 
right  and  wrong ;  and  (4.)  his  belief,  vague  though  it 
may  have  been,  in  immortality.  When  his  wife  died 
so  suddenly  in  his  absence,  his  heart  seemed  break- 
ing at  the  thought  that  he  could  never  see  her  again. 
'  Yet  then  and  afterwards,  when  he  grew  calm,  and 
was  in  full  possession  of  himself,  he  spoke  always  of 
a  life  to  come,  and  the  meeting  of  friends  in  it,  as  a 
thing  not  impossible.' 

Carlyle  was  great  as  a  Moral  Teacher  in  so  far  as 
he  preserved  certain  elements  of  his  early  creed.  In 
his  earnestness  he  honestly  believed  that  he  had  dis- 
covered the  truths  he  proclaimed.  They  seemed  to 
him  to  have  vanished  from  Christendom,  sunk  into 
dotage  and  formality.  But,  truly  speaking,  every 
genuine  element  of  his  moral  teaching,  overlaid  as  it 
may  have  been  by  churchly  traditions,  was  still  living 
in  Christianity.  The  eternal  '  Veracities,'  every  one 
of  them,  were  Christian  ideals,  however  obscured 
by  convention  or  reduced  in  practice ;  and  no  teacher, 
certainly  not  Carlyle,  has  been  able  to  convert  the 
ideal    everywhere    into    fact.      Convention,    cant,    re- 

^  Mr.   Froude   represents  him  as  saying   quite   definitely,    'It    is  as 
sure  as  Mathematics  such  a  thing  never  happened.' 


Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Religious  Teacher.   207 

asserts  itself  in  the  soil  of  human  nature — springs 
like  a  noxious  weed  amidst  the  growths  of  human 
passion  and  self-deception.  The  ideals  of  conduct 
require  to  be  constantly  reasserted  and  applied  with 
renewed  earnestness  to  the  individual,  social,  political, 
and  religious  life  of  mankind.  Carlyle  did  a  noble 
service  in  this  way  as  a  Preacher  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Divine  Righteousness  in  a  world  ever  lapsing  both 
from  the  idea  and  the  realisation  of  such  a  kingdom. 
But  he  not  only  did  not  advance  the  moral  ideal ;  he 
rather  retrogressed,  by  abstracting  from  it  the  spiritual 
conditions  most  fitted  to  nurture  it  and  make  it  living 
and  aggressive.  By  lowering  the  thought  of  God 
from  that  of  a  Sublime  Personality  whose  highest 
name  is  Love,  to  a  mere  impersonal  conception — 
whether  in  the  singular  or  plural  form,  such  as — '  The 
Divine,'  '  Silence,'  the  *  Eternities,'  '  Immensities,' ' 
he  relapsed  into  a  species  of  Stoicism  which  has  long 
ago  proved  itself  ineffectual  both  as  a  guide  of 
human  conduct  and  a  response  to  the  human  heart. 
Like  many  noble  minds  he  shrank  from  the  fussiness 
and  what  he  considered  the  degradation  of  religion  as 
embodied  in  churches  and  their  multiplied  and  mixed 
activities.       The    Divine   seemed   to    him    formalised 

^  This  old  phase  of  religious  thought  is  known  to  every  student  of 
its  history  not  only  in  Stoicism  but  in  Gnosticism.  In  the  very  Juda- 
ism which  Carlyle  so  much  repudiated  the  same  disinclination  which 
he  himself  had  to  fix  the  idea  of  the  Divine  and  name  it  was  power- 
fully present,  and  had  a  significant  influence  in  the  development  of  the 
Christian  conception  of  God.  We  fear  it  must  be  said  that  to  Carlyle 
in  some  respect  is  due  the  modern  habit,  conspicuously  exemplified  in 
Natural  Eeligion  and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  writings,  of  using  the 
name  of  God  without  any  note  of  its  Christian  meaning, — a  habit  in 
every  respect  pernicious,  as  both  leading  to  moral  confusion  and  ignor- 
ing the  living  growth  of  moral  and  religious  ideas. 


2o8       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

and  belittled  in  their  narrow  restrictions ;  but  the 
remedy  for  this  can  never  be  found  in  turning  the 
Divine  into  a  mere  vague  generality  which  may  mean 
anything  or  nothing.  This  is  really  to  fall  back  in 
the  progress  of  moral  ideas,  and  to  end,  as  it  has 
done  in  all  our  modern  endeavours  after  a  Natural, 
— or,  as  "he  would  have  called  it,  '  Natural-Super- 
natural '  Religion, — in  an  idealisation  of  Force  as 
the  last  word  both  of  morality  and  religion.  The 
idea  of  Personality  embracing  alike  righteousness 
and  love,  order  and  pity,  can  alone  make  the  Divine 
a  living  power  to  the  human  conscience — a  Life 
above,  redeeming  and  sanctifying  as  well  as  con- 
trollinef  human  life. 


VI. 
JOHN  STUART  MILL  AND  HIS  SCHOOL. 

XTOTHING  can  be  greater  than  the  contrast  be- 
■^  tween  the  upbringing  of  Thomas  Carlyle  and 

John  Stuart  Mill.  Yet  both  were  of  Scottish  blood, 
and  the  father  of  the  one  and  grandfather  of  the  other 
were  very  much  in  the  same  social  position.  James 
Carlyle  was  originally  a  mason,  and  then  a  farmer. 
James  Mill— the  father  of  the  author  of  the  History 
of  British  India — was  a  Kincardineshire  shoemaker, 
more  or  less  prosperous  in  his  earlier  years.  Both 
lived  in  a  cottage,  and  partook  of  the  same  simple 
rough  diet  which  nurtured  the  Scottish  peasant  in 
the  end  of  last  century.  Not  only  so ;  but  the  same 
ambition,  so  common  to  the  Scottish  peasant  of  the 
time,  inspired  both  families.  Carlyle's  father  and 
mother  wished  him  to  become  a  minister  of  the 
Scottish  Church.  James  Mill  the  shoemaker,  and 
especially  his  wife,  who  seems  to  have  been  originally 
of  a  higher  position,  as  she  was  of  a  somewhat  higher 
character  than  her  husband,  brought  up  their  son — 
or  he  was  brought  up  by  others  under  their  special 
sanction — to  the  same  ministry.  Unlike  Thomas 
Carlyle,  James  Mill  not  only  studied  for  the  Christian 
ministry,  but  became  a  preacher  in  the  Scottish 
Church,  and  officiated  as  such  for  three  years. 

O  209 


2IO      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

With  these  similarities  in  their  origin  there  was 
the  most  marked  difference  in  the  early  life  of  the 
two  men.  James  Mill,  as  is  well  known,  not  only 
abandoned  the  profession  to  which  he  had  been 
trained,  but  he  definitely  and  entirely  abandoned 
Christianity ;  and  in  the  wonderful  education  which 
he  gave  his  famous  son  religion  had  no  part.  Among 
all  the  books  which  the  latter  read — so  appalling 
in  number  and  variety — the  Bible  had  no  place. 
Carlyle's  early  thought  and  imagination  were  fed 
upon  the  Bible.  It  was  originally,  and  remained 
more  than  Goethe  and  all  else,  the  basis  of  his 
varied  culture.  Not  only  in  the  Scriptures — but  in 
the  person  of  his  mother  particularly — religion  was 
steadily  before  the  mind  of  Carlyle  as  a  youth.  On 
the  contrary,  the  very  idea  of  religion  was  carefully 
excluded  from  John  Stuart  Mill's  mind.  '  I  was 
brought  up  from  the  first,'  are  his  own  words, 
'  without  any  religious  belief.'^  I  am  one  of  the 
very  few  examples  in  this  country  of  one  who 
has  not  thrown  off  religious  belief,  but  never  had 
it.  I  grew  up  in  a  negative  state  with  regard 
to  it.'  This  of  course  implies  that  his  mother, 
whatever  may  have  been  her  own  sentiments,  did 
nothing  to  make  up  his  lack  of  religious  educa- 
tion. James  Mill,  indeed,  was  not  the  man  to  permit 
any  interference,  even  from  such  a  source,  with  the 
remarkable  plan  of  education  which  he  had  sketched 
for  his  son,  and  which,  amidst  all  his  own  hard 
work,  he  persistently  carried  out.  We  hear  little  or 
nothing  of  the  wife  and  mother  in  this  strange  house- 
hold.    She  was  good-looking,  it-  is  said,  with  '  a  small 

*  Autobiography,  p.  38. 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2 1 1 

fine  figure,  and  an  aquiline  t^'pe  of  face,  seen  in  her 
eldest  son.'      The  marriage  was  one  of  affection,  and 
the  household  became  a  large  one,  and  was  admirably 
managed  by  her.     But  the  singular  hardness  of  James 
Mill's    character,  and  the  failure  on  the   part  of  his 
wife  to  prove  a  companion  to  him   in   his  intellectual 
enthusiasm,  led    to    early  disappointment,    and  '  the 
union  was  never  happy.' ^      The  surprising  thing  is 
that   the   son,    in    his    Autobiography,   should     never 
mention  his  mother  when  dwelling  with  such  minute 
detail  on  his  father's  character  and   opinions — here,  as 
in  other  respects,  differing  so  much  from  Carlyle.    The 
greatest   beauty  of    Carlyle's     biography   would    un- 
doubtedly be  gone  if  the  figure  of  his  mother,  and  his 
passionate  devotion  to  her,  were  absent  from  its  pages. 
His  love  for  his  mother,  as  her  love  to  him,  are  more 
than  any  other  the  golden  threads  that  run  through 
his  struggling  life.     In  Mill  we  find  nothing  of  this. 
There  is  no  tenderness  even  in  the  feeling  which  he 
expresses  towards  his  father,  loyally  as  he  was    de- 
voted to   him, — and  of  his  mother  not  a  word.      This 
speaks  volumes  as  to  the  different  character  of  the 
families,  and  of  the  great  men  who  came  from  them. 
This  typical   difference  will  be  seen   on  many  occa- 
sions in  their  respective  careers. 

There  is  a  strange  onesidedness  in  John  Mill's 
account  of  his  father's  views  on  religion,  or — to  put 
it  otherwise — in  James  Mill's  religious  opinions  as 
represented  by  his  son.  It  is  evident  from  this 
account  alone  that  Christian  preacher  as  James  Mill 
had  been,  he  had  not  studied  Christianity  either  in 
its  substance  or  evidences,  in  any  large  spirit.      He 

^  Bain's  Biography  of  James  Mill,  p.  60. 


212 


Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 


had   looked  at  it  closely  as  a  definite  creed  or   set  of 
opinions,  but  without  any  recognition  of  its  develop- 
ment as  either  a  speculative  or  ethical  system.       God 
was  conceived  by  him  after  the  Deistic  fashion  of  last 
century  as  holding  a  purely  external    relation   to  the 
world,  and,  as  its  Creator,  directly  responsible  for  all 
its  evil  and  good  alike.      Religion  was  to  him  a  mere 
device,  or  at  best  a  growth  of  imaginative  passion,  for 
the  most  part  evil   rather  than  good.      He  is  repre- 
sented as  affirming  '  a  hundred  times  ' '  that  all  ages  and 
nations    have    represented    their    Gods  as  wicked    in 
a    constantly  increasing    progression — that    mankind 
have  gone  on  adding  trait  after  trait  till   they  reached 
the  most  perfect  conception   of  wickedness  which  the 
human  mind  can  devise,  and   have   called  this    God, 
and  prostrated  themselves  before  it'     Such  an  opinion 
could  only  have    been    entertained  by  a  man  who, 
whatever  other  things  he  knew,  did  not  know  religion 
in   any   intelligent   manner,  who  had   not   even   con- 
ceived intelligently  what  religion  means.      It  would 
be  hardly  possible  to  condense  into  a  single  sentence 
a  series  of  grosser  misconceptions.     Whatever  be  the 
origin   of  religion    it    certainly   does    not    come    out 
of  the   mere   wickedness   of    man's   heart,   nor  grow 
worse  as  history  advances.     It  is  infinitely  more  true 
to  say  that  it  springs  out  of  the  higher  imagination 
and  spiritual  side  of  human  nature,  whatever  grosser 
elements  may  also  mingle  in  it,  and  it  is  certain  that 
its  progression  has  been,  as  surely  as  the  progression 
of  morality,  from  lower  and   more  imperfect  to  more 
elevated  and  perfect  forms.      James  Mill's  dogmatism 
was  at  all   times    narrow  and    one-sided ;    but   dog- 
matism so  ignorant  and  superficial  as  that  now  quoted 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2 1 3 

touches  the  very  sanity  of  his  intellectual  conceptions 
on  the  side  of  religion. 

James  Mill's  infidelity  evidently  sprang  from 
ignorant  misconception  of  the  Christian  idea  of  God. 
He  fell  into  the  very  snare  which  Philosophy  such  as 
his  is  fond  of  attributing  to  popular  religion.  The 
God  of  his  imagination  was  anthropomorphic  and 
nothing  else — a  Being  supposed  to  sit  in  the  heavens 
and  to  apportion,  directly  after  the  manner  of  a  man, 
all  the  issues  of  good  and  evil  in  the  world.  There 
was  no  wonder  that  he  came  to  reject  such  an  idea 
— or  with  such  a  mechanical  conception  of  Divine 
agency  he  should  have  plunged  into  Manichaeism 
as  the  only  possible  solution  of  the  problem  of  the 
universe.  He  found  it  impossible  to  believe  that  a 
world  so  full  of  evil  could  be  the  work  of  an  Author 
at  once  almighty  and  beneficent.  It  appeared  to 
him  a  far  more  feasible  theory  that  the  world  was 
the  production  of  an  Evil  as  well  as  Good  Power 
struggling  for  mastery.  Christian  theism,  according 
to  him,  instead  of  being  an  advance  was  really  a 
retrogression  from  the  old  Sabaean  or  Manichaean 
theory.  St.  Augustine  was  profoundly  mistaken 
when  he  abandoned  the  latter  theory  for  the  former. 
We  have  been  so  accustomed  to  crudities  of  specu- 
lation in  our  day  that  we  write  these  sentiments 
without  a  shock.  But  coming  as  they  did  from  the 
mouth  of  a  philosopher  they  are  not  the  less 
nonsense.  Of  all  conceptions  of  the  government  of 
the  world  the  Dualistic  is  one  of  the  coarsest  and 
most  untenable.  It  ignores  alike  the  laws  of  reason 
and  the  comprehensive  meaning  of  facts — ^both  of 
which  irresistibly  point  to  a   unity.      All  the   lessons 


2 1 4       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  Science  and  the  hopes  of  life  point  in  the  same 
direction. 

But  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  Evil  in  the  world  ? 
It  is  there.  And  is  not  the  idea  of  an  allotted  place 
of  Evil  to  which  the  wicked  are  doomed  a  Christian 
conception?  'Think  of  a  Being,'  Mill  was  accus- 
tomed to  say,  '  who  would  make  a  Hell — who  would 
create  the  human  race  with  the  infallible  foreknow- 
ledge, and  therefore  with  the  intention  that  the  great 
majority  of  them  were  to  be  assigned  to  terrible  and 
everlasting  punishment'  Even  if  there  be  a  hell  in 
Mr.  Mill's  sense,  it  does  not  follow  that  God  made  it. 
Still  less  does  it  follow  that  the  human  race  were 
'created'  with  the  intention  that  'the  great  majority  of 
them  '  should  be  consigned  to  it.  A  cruder  explana- 
tion, ignoring  a  whole  world  of  Christian  argument,  can 
hardly  be  imagined.  Mr.  Mill  had  no  right  to  sub- 
stitute his  own  mechanical  conception  of  Deity,  and 
no  less  of  good  and  evil,  and  then  from  his  own  point 
of  view  to  condemn  Christianity,  which  rests  on  quite 
other  conceptions.  There  is  no  resemblance  between 
the  Divine  Ideal  of  the  New  Testament,  whose  will 
is  that  '  all  men  be  saved  '  and  '  an  Omnipotent 
Author  of  Hell.'  Nor  is  there  any  resemblance 
between  the  evil  which  condemns  men  in  the  Gospel, 
and  the  evil  to  which  Mr.  Mill  supposes  them  to  be 
condemned.  Evil  is  a  great  fact  in  the  world,  be- 
yond all  question,  but  it  is  not  more  a  fact  than  the 
consciousness  that  the  worst  evil  is  always  the  fruit 
of  our  own  will.  To  make  God  the  author  of  it 
because  man  is  the  doer  of  it  is  a  generalisation  not 
only  crude  but  self-condemned  on  the  very  testimony 
of  the  doer  himself      To    speak  of  God   as    making 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2 1 5 

Hell,  when  the  worst  hell  is  that  which  a  man  makes 
for  himself,  is  a  poor  fallacy  as  well  as  a  gross  cari- 
cature. It  does  not  come  out  of  the  region  of 
Christian  thought  at  all,  which  it  is  evident  James 
Mill  never  entered.  There  was  no  room  in  his  philo- 
sophy for  the  mystery  of  Will — Divine  or  human — 
and  the  very  conditions  of  the  Christian  problem 
were  therefore  not  before  him.  His  caricature  may 
find  its  justification  in  pulpit  rhetoric — for  what 
extravagances  may  not  the  popular  imagination 
reach  ?  But  one  does  not  expect  to  find  the  philo- 
sopher rivalling  and  even  outdoing  the  street  preacher 
on  his  favourite  ground,  and  the  Christian  apologist 
is  not  bound  to  bandy  arguments  of  such  a  nature. 

In  order  to  judge  any  religion  fairly  it  must  be 
judged  from  its  highest  point  of  view.  James  Mill 
seems  never  to  have  understood  this,  and  his  son, 
with  a  much  fairer  and  broader  mind,  which  con- 
stantly owns  the  difference  between  certain  popular 
notions  of  Christianity  and  Christianity  itself,  is  yet 
apt,  with  all  his  school,  to  argue  from  the  lower 
rather  than  from  the  higher  level.  Nothing  is 
easier  than  to  give  a  thing  a  bad  name,  and  then 
show  how  worthless  it  is ;  in  other  words,  to  debase 
the  Christian  ideal,  and  then  point  out  how  unworthy 
of  credence  it  is.  In  no  other  subject  save  religion 
would  such  a  mode  of  argument  be  allowed.  On  any 
other  subject  men  feel  bound  to  accept  its  highest 
interpretation  as  the  only  true  interpretation.  The 
students  of  a  special  subject  are  allowed  to  be  the 
judges,  and  the  only  judges  of  its  right  meaning. 
But  every  one  thinks  himself  capable  of  sitting  in 
judgment  upon  religion  although  he  may  have  given 


2 1 6       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

no  study  whatever  to  the  subject.  And  the  whole 
class  of  philosophical  writers  to  whom  the  Mills 
belonged  were  in  the  habit  of  fighting  with  unfair 
weapons  of  this  kind.  We  do  not  suppose  and  do 
not  affirm  that  they  were  conscious  of  any  unfair- 
ness ;  but  the  effect  of  their  arguments  is  not  the  less 
unfair.  In  treating  past  systems  of  morality  they 
would  carefully  endeavour  to  find  their  essential 
principles  in  their  best  modes  of  expression  ;  and  it 
was  therefore  a  singular  perversity  which  led  them, 
whenever  they  approached  the  subject  of  religion, 
to  take  up  with  its  flimsiest  and  most  unworthy  ex- 
pressions. But  a  man  so  non-religious  as  James 
Mill  could  hardly  be  expected  to  understand  Christi- 
anity any  more  than  a  man  without  any  soul  or 
faculty  for  music  could  understand  harmony.  There 
are  men,  and  James  Mill  was  one  of  them,  so  utterly 
lacking  in  spiritual  instinct  that  their  judgments  as 
to  religion  really  merit  no  more  attention  than  other 
men's  judgments  about  music.  We  by  no  means  say 
the  same  thing  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  We  shall  have 
occasion  to  show  that  he  possessed  far  higher 
instincts.  But  he  was  trained  in  a  school  which 
not  only  knew  nothing  of  religion,  but  may  be  said 
deliberately  to  have  despised  it.  It  was  outside  the 
whole  range  of  his  experience  and  culture.  Men  are 
not  supposed  to  be  and  cannot  be  experts  in  anything 
the  very  rudiments  of  which  they  have  never  learned; 
and  we  have  no  right  therefore  beforehand  to  look  to 
John  Stuart  Mill's  writings  as  possessing  any  special 
authority  on  this  subject. 

Of  John  Stuart  Mill's  general  education  under  his 
father  we  need  not  speak.     He  has  himself  given  us 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2 1 7 

the  most  ample  and  detailed  account  of  it.  It  is  a 
marvellous  story,  the  interesting  effect  of  which, 
however,  is  impaired  by  its  great  singularity.  Not 
only  was  John  Mill  beyond  all  other  boys  ever 
heard  of  in  his  aptitude  for  learning,  and  in  the 
amount  and  variety  of  his  acquisitions,  while  still 
a  bare  youth.  He  lived  to  wear  all  his  knowledge 
and  learning  as  the  flower  of  a  rare  and  noble  intel- 
lect. Any  other  boy  we  fancy  must  have  broken 
down  and  become  effete  before  manhood  under  such 
a  pressure  of  education.  He  could  read  Greek 
fluently  when  about  six  years  old,  at  the  time  young 
people  in  general  are  beginning  the  first  standard. 
Before  he  was  eight  he  had  read  the  whole  of  Hero- 
dotus and  a  considerable  part  of  Xenophon.  He  had 
read  six  of  Plato's  Dialogues,  including  the  Theae- 
tetus  in  181 3,  while  still  only  seven.  It  takes  away 
one's  breath  to  speak  of  such  achievements,  and  they 
represent  a  mere  fraction  of  the  story  which  he  tells 
us.^  Father  and  son  together,  the  former  as  teacher, 
the  latter  as  pupil,  present  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
autobiography  a  picture  which  is  incomparable — the 
tenacious  firmness  of  the  father  in  urging  the  son 
along  the  pathway  of  knowledge,  severely  testing 
every  step  in  his  progress  as  if  a  matter  of  course 
needing  no  acknowledgment,  and  the  eager  respon- 
siveness of  the  son,  honouring  rather  than  loving  the 
hand  which  led  him  onwards  with  such  rigid  resolve. 
Besides  the  Classics,  Greek  and  Latin  (Latin  after 
Greek)  and  Mathematics,  he  studied  diligently  and 
copiously  History,  English  Poetry,  although  with  a 
less    universal    interest.    Chemistry,    Logic,    Political 

*  Autobiography,  pp.  5-25. 


2 1 8       Movements  of  Religious  Thought, 

Economy.  He  read  Aristotle's  Analytics,  in  the  origi- 
nal of  course,  when  about  twelve.  In  all  he  was 
more  or  less  a  proficient  before  he  was  fourteen,  when 
he  went  abroad  (1820)  for  a  six  months'  sojourn  in 
the  south  of  France.  Withal,  he  tells  us,  and  we 
believe  him,  he  was  not  self-conceited.  His  father,  he 
says,  completely  succeeded  in  keeping  him  out  of  the 
way  of  hearing  himself  praised,  and  so  he  was  not  at 
all  aware  that  his  attainments  'were  anything  unusual 
at  his  age.'  In  personal  manner,  in  mature  years,  he 
was  certainly  free  from  all  self-assumption.  It  may 
be  more  doubtful  whether  his  intellectual  manner,  as 
shown  in  his  writings,  does  not  all  along  bear  trace 
of  a  certain  conscious  mental  superiority,  especially 
when  controverted  on  any  of  his  favourite  topics.  It 
could  hardly  be  otherwise. 

In  all  the  variety  of  his  studies,  as  already  in- 
dicated. Biblical  or  religious  literature  had  no  place. 
His  mind  had  no  religious  aspirations.  It  found  all 
its  satisfaction  in  secular  acquisition,  and  in  specula- 
tion and  logical  analysis.  From  the  first  he  was  a 
'  master  of  sentences,'  writing  out  under  his  father's 
eyes  elaborate  abstracts  of  the  books  he  read, 
especially  in  history  and  philosophy.  No  youth, 
I  should  think,  ever  wrote  so  many  digests,  or  pre- 
pared himself  so  carefully,  by  mastery  of  the  thoughts 
of  others  for  the  work  of  thought  himself  He 
describes  the  great  influence  exercised  upon  him  by 
his  first  direct  contact  with  Bentham's  speculations. 
His  whole  previous  education  had  been  in  a  sense 
'  a  course  of  Benthamism  ; '  but,  after  his  return  from 
abroad,  he  began  the  study  of  Bentham  on  his  own 
account,  as  interpreted  in  Dumont's  T7'aite  de  Lcgisla- 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2 1 9 

tion.  The  reading  of  this  book  was  'an  epoch'  in  his 
Hfe.  The  classifications,  'more  clear  and  compact 
than  in  Bentham's  original  work,  were  illuminating 
in  the  highest  degree.'  He  felt  taken  up  to  an  emi- 
nence,' from  which  he  could  survey 'a  vast  mental 
domain,  and  see  stretching  out  into  the  distance 
intellectual  results  beyond  all  computation.'  And 
to  this  intellectual  clearness  there  seemed  to  be 
added  'the  most  inspiring  prospects  of  practical 
improvement  in  human  affairs.'  'When  I  laid  down 
the  last  volume  of  the  Traite,'  he  goes  on, '  I  had 
become  a  different  being.  The  "  principle  of  utility," 
understood  as  Bentham  understood  it,  and  applied 
in  the  manner  in  which  he  applied  it,  fell  exactly 
into  its  place  as  the  key-stone  which  held  together 
the  detached  and  fragmentary  component  parts  of 
my  knowledge  and  belief  It  gave  unity  to  my 
conception  of  things.  I  now  had  opinions ;  a  creed, 
a  doctrine,  a  philosophy,  in  one  among  the  best 
senses  of  the  word,'  he  adds,  '  a  religion.' 

In  the  following  year  he  began  to  write  indepen- 
dently. In  1823  he  was  appointed  a  clerk  under  his 
father  in  the  office  of  Examiner  of  Correspondence 
in  the  East  India  Company,  in  whose  service  he 
gradually  rose  to  be  chief  conductor  of  the  Corre- 
spondence with  India  in  one  of  the  leading  depart- 
ments— that  of  Native  States.  Finally  he  became 
Examiner,  but  only  two  years  before  the  abolition  of 
the  Company  (1858).  His  first  essays  in  authorship 
were,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  in  the  newspapers,  in 
the  end  of  1822  and  beginning  of  1823  ;  and  when  the 
Westminster  Review  was  launched  in  April  1824,  he 
became  a  regular  contributor  from  the  second  number 


2  20       Moveme7its  of  Religious  Thought. 

till  the  year  1828,  when  through  some  misunder- 
standing with  the  editor,  Mr.  Bowring,  afterwards 
Sir  John  Bowring,  he  ceased  to  write  for  it.  He 
describes  his  own  early  performances  in  Hterature 
as  'dry,'  and  '  entirely  argumentative.'  He  could 
manage  argument  as  the  natural  fruit  of  his  educa- 
tion. But  no  other  mode  of  composition  came  to 
him  naturally  at  this  time.  He  admits,  indeed,  that 
the  phrase  applied  to  the  Benthamites  in  general  of 
being  merely  reasoning  machines — '  inapplicable'  in 
some  cases — was  by  no  means  untrue  of  himself  in 
those  years.  His  great  object  in  association  with 
others  was  to  draw  them  into  argument.  In  the 
winter  of  1822-3,  ^^  formed  a  society  of  young  men 
'agreeing  in  fundamental  principles,'  to  meet  together 
once  a  fortnight  to  read  essays  and  discuss  questions. 
He  gave  it  the  name  of  the  'Utilitarian'  Society, 
which  was  the  first  usage  of  the  word  he  beheves  in 
its  current  philosophical  sense.  He  disclaims  invent- 
ing it,  however,  and  says  he  found  it  in  one  of  Gait's 
novels,  where  a  Scotch  clergyman  warns  his  hearers 
'not  to  leave  the  Gospel  and  become  Utilitarians.' 
He  was  evidently  also  the  inspiring  spirit  of  meetings 
which  were  held  for  several  years  at  Mr.  Grote's 
house,  for  reading  and  conversation  chiefly  in  Political 
Economy  and  Logic.  The  meetings  were  from  half- 
past  eight  until  ten  in  the  morning,  and  appear  to  have 
been  highly  fruitful,  so  far  as  his  own  speculations 
on  both  these  subjects  were  concerned.  '  I  have 
always  dated  from  these  conversations,'  he  says,  'my 
own  real  inauguration  as  an  original  and  independent 
thinker.'  He  was  an  active  member  of  still  another 
association,  the  object  of  which  was  to  cultivate  the 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School,        2  2 1 

gifts  of  speech,  rather  than  of  reasoning.  Roebuck,  he, 
and  some  others,  met  in  1825  at  the  '  Co-operative 
Society,'  composed  of  Owenites  which  met  for  weekly- 
public  discussions  in  Chancery  Lane.  They  went  to 
this  Society,  not  as  approving  of  Owenism,  but  with 
a  view  of  discussing  the  principles  which  it  involved, 
some  of  the  chief  Ovvenists  acting  in  concert  with 
them,  nothing  loth  to  have  a  controversy  with  oppo- 
nents, rather  than  a  tame  debate  among  themselves. 
Charles  Austin,  Charles  Villiers,  and  a  once  well- 
known  educational  writer,  Mr.  Ellis,  were  among  the 
number  of  the  speakers ;  but  the  speaker  that  struck 
Mill  most,  although  he  dissented  from  nearly  every 
word  he  said,  was  Thirhvall,  the  historian,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  St.  David's,  '  then  a  Chancery  Barrister 
unknown,  except  for  a  high  reputation  for  eloquence 
acquired  at  the  Cambridge  Union  before  the  era  of 
Austin  and  Macaulay.'  '  His  speech  was  in  answer 
to  one  of  mine,'  the  autobiography  continues.  *  Before 
he  had  uttered  two  sentences,  I  set  him  down  as  the 
best  speaker  I  had  ever  heard,  and  I  have  never  since 
heard  any  one  that  I  placed  above  him.' 

These  debates  led  to  a  new  combination,  in  imi- 
tation of  the  Edinburgh  Speculative  Society,  where 
Brougham  and  Horner  were  known  to  have  con- 
tended. This  Society  lasted  for  many  years,  and 
occupied  much  of  Mill's  time.  The  chief  difficulty 
at  first  was  to  secure  a  sufficient  number  of  Tory 
speakers.  Almost  all  the  members  were  Liberals  of 
different  orders  and  degrees,  such  as  Macaulay,  Thirl- 
wall,  Praed,  Lord  Howick,  Samuel  Wilberforce  (after- 
wards Bishop  of  Oxford),  the  two  Bulwers  (Edward 
and  Henry),  and  Fonblanque,  the  well-known  editor  of 


222       Movements  of  Religiotis  Thought. 

the  Examiner.  It  was  difficult  in  such  circumstances 
to  maintain  the  Hfe  of  the  Society;  but  in  1826-7,  two 
young  Tory  speakers  of  great  ability  were  found — the 
late  Mr.  Haywardand  Sergeant  Shee — while  Cockburn, 
the  late  Chief-Justice,  and  Charles  Buller,  Carlyle's 
pupil,  joined  the  Society  on  the  Liberal  side.  The 
result  was  the  most  lively  discussions  between  the  Tory 
lawyers  and  the  'philosophic  Radicals,'  attracting  a 
wide  attention.  A  new  element  was  added  to  the 
Society  in  1828  and  1829,  when  the  Coleridgians,  in 
the  persons  of  Maurice  and  Sterling,  made  their 
appearance  as  a  second  Liberal  and  even  Radical 
party,  on  totally  different  grounds  from  Benthamism, 
and  vehemently  opposed  to  it.  '  Our  debates  were  very 
different  from  those  of  common  debating  societies,  for 
they  habitually  consisted  of  the  strongest  arguments 
and  most  philosophic  principles,  which  either  side 
was  able  to  produce,  thrown  often  into  close  and 
terse  confutations  of  one  another,'  ^ 

A  life  of  such  incessant  and  severe  intellectual 
application — with  no  out-door  exercise  except  long 
walks  in  the  country — led  with  young  Mill  to  the 
inevitable  consequence.  He  fell  into  a  state  of  ill- 
health  and  depression  of  spirits.  He  has  himself 
described  this  at  length  in  his  autobiography  as  '  a 
crisis  '  in  his  mental  history.  He  had  set  before  him-  " 
self  the  great  object  of  being 'a  reformer  of  the  world.' 
He  had  found  all  his  happiness — he  was  still  only 
20  years  of  age — in  this  high  ambition.  Suddenly, 
in  the  autumn  of  1826,  he  felt  as  if  this  great  object 
no  longer  interested  him.  He  was  'in  a  dull  state  of 
nerves,'    and   became    uneasy   and    dissatisfied.      He 

^Autobiography,  pp.  128-129. 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        223 

compares  his  condition,  just  as  Carlyle  did  a  few- 
years  earlier,  to  that  '  in  which  converts  to  Method- 
ism usually  are  '  when  smitten  by  that  first  '  conviction 
of  sin.'  He  asked  himself.  What  if  all  after  which  he 
aspired  were  realised  ?  Would  his  happiness  be  secure? 
The  answer  of  '  an  irrepressible  self-consciousness 
within  him '  was  distinctly  '  no.'  At  this  his  heart 
sank  within  him,  and  the  whole  future  of  his  life 
seemed  to  fall  to  the  ground.  Neither  sleep  nor  dis- 
traction could  chase  away  the  cloud  which  rested  on 
him.  He  awoke  to  an  ever-renewed  consciousness  of 
his  misery.  For  months  the  cloud  '  seemed  to  grow 
thicker  and  thicker.'  Mill  treats  this  unhappy  crisis 
of  his  as  mainly  if  not  entirely  mental,  and  the  infer- 
ence he  would  have  us  to  draw  is  that  he  then  under- 
went— as  Carlyle,  we  also  saw,  supposed — a  new  birth 
or  conversion.  There  is  indeed  in  Mill's  case  no  pre- 
tence of  any  religious  change.  There  was  really  no 
basis  for  such  a  change  in  his  mental  experience  and 
association.  All  thoughts  of  sin  or  moral  shortcoming 
were  entirely  absent  from  him.  What  the  Methodist 
means  by  '  conviction  of  sin  '  was  unintelligible  to  him 
then  and  at  all  times.  But  a  change  we  believe  of  a 
thorough  character  did  come  to  him,  partly  moral 
and  partly  intellectual.  After  long  suffering  a  ray 
of  light  broke  in  upon  his  gloom.  He  was  reading 
Marmontel's  Mcinoires,  and  the  picture  of  self-sacrifice 
there  brought  before  him  in  the  resolution  of  the 
young  Marmontel  after  his  father's  death  to  be  all 
that  his  father  had  been  to  the  family,  moved  him  to 
tears,  and  woke  within  him  brighter  hopes.  From  this 
moment  his  burden  was  lighter.  The  cloud  gradually 
drew  off,  and  he  was  able  once  more  to  enjoy  life. 


224       Moveme^its  of  Religions  Thought. 

It  is  remarkable  how  the  language  of  religion  comes 
to  Mill's  lips  as  it  did  to  Carlyle's  with  still  more 
touching  force,  at  such  a  period  of  inward  conflict. 
There  was  apparently,  however,  less  of  a  conflict  in 
the  one  case  than  the  other.  Two  important  results 
are  attributed  by  him  to  this  crisis.  He  modified 
his  theory  of  life  so  as  no  longer  to  pursue  happiness 
as  a  conscious  object,  but  duty  rather,  in  the  conviction 
that  happiness  was  sure  to  follow ;  and  he  learned 
that  true  culture  was  to  be  found  in  a  wider  range 
of  experience  than  he  had  previously  aimed  at. 
Feeling  had  hitherto  little  to  do  with  his  education. 
His  father's  idea  had  been  that  the  feelings  would 
always  take  sufficient  care  of  themselves,  and  did 
not  require  to  be  specially  cultivated.  But  now  he 
saw  how  inadequate  his  former  purely  intellectual 
or  logical  standard  had  been ;  and  the  cultivation 
of  the  feelings  became  henceforth  one  of  the  cardinal 
points  in  his  ethical  and  philosophical  creed. 

Such  is,  very  briefly  summed  up,  Mill's  own 
account  of  this  phase  of  his  mental  history,  to  which  he 
evidently  attached  great  significance.  More  widely 
viewed,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  as  in  Carlyle's 
case,  the  state  of  his  physical  health  had  far  more 
to  do  with  the  crisis  than  he  was  disposed  to  allow. 
Dr.  Bain  indeed,  who  lived  in  such  close  association 
with  him  for  many  years,  although  not  at  this  early 
time,  is  disposed  to  attribute  all  his  dejection  now 
and  on  subsequent  occasions  in  his  life,  which  were 
not  unfrequent,  to  purely  physical  causes,  the  '  chief 
of  which  was  of  course  overwork  of  the  brain.'  If 
ever  a  young  brain  was  overtaxed.  Mill's  certainly 
was,  and  there  seems  every  reason  to  conclude  that 


yolin  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        225 

Dr.  Bain's  explanation  is  the  correct  one,  although 
we  may  allow  more  than  he  does  for  accompanying 
mental  perplexities.  In  his  unhappiness  there  was 
nothing,  strictly  speaking,  of  the  higher  spiritual 
order ;  but  the  loss  of  his  youthful  ideal  was  so  far 
akin  to  a  consciousness  of  spiritual  loss  and  insuffi- 
ciency ;  and  it  worked  as  all  such  losses  do — baffled 
hope,  defeated  ambition, — like  '  madness  in  the  brain.' 
Overstrain,  no  doubt,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  was 
the  root  of  the  suffering.  But  who  shall  measure  in 
the  inner  chamber  of  consciousness  how  far  the 
spiritual  interlaces  itself  with  the  physical,  and  con- 
tributes to  the  intolerable  misery  that  accompanies 
such  nervous  depression  ! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  John  Stuart  Mill 
emerged  from  his  mental  crisis  a  richer  and  broader- 
minded  man  than  he  was  before.  Music,  poetry, — 
especially  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth ; — the  association 
with  Maurice  and  Sterling,  both  of  whom — he  owns, 
while  deploring  in  the  former  a  greater  waste  of 
intellectual  power  (as  he  thought)  than  in  any  of  his 
contemporaries — were  of  considerable  help  in  his 
development ;  and  finally  Carlyle ;  all  assisted  to 
enlarge  his  thought  and  rescue  him  from  the  narrow 
intellectual  groove  in  which  he  had  been  trained. 
His  father  looked  askance  at  all  these  wider  studies 
and  influences.  Many  of  his  father's  friends  did  the 
same.  It  is  amusing,  yet  in  a  way  melancholy,  to 
read  of  the  anxieties  he  excited,  lest  he  should  forsake 
'  the  true  faith '  of  the  experience-philosophy.  He 
was  watched  with  more  jealousy  than  the  promising 
Christian  neophyte  by  old  theologians,  lest  he  should 
stray  from  the  fold.     George  Grote,  Dr.  Bain  tells  us, 


2  26       Movements  of  Religious  TJioiight. 

had  always  certain  misgivings  about  him.  It  was  he, 
as  we  shall  see  again,  who  chiefly  watched  for  his 
backsliding.  '  Much  as  I  admire  John  Mill,'  he  used 
to  say,  '  my  admiration  is  always  mixed  with  fear.' 
So  soon  does  the  old  leaven  of  Sectarianism,  erro- 
neously supposed  to  be  a  special  property  of  Christen- 
dom, assert  itself  in  the  most  alien  creeds,  and  blend 
its  noxious  power  with  the  boldest  freethinking. 

James  Mill  died  in  1836  of  pulmonary  consumption, 
the  year  after  the  starting  of  the  London  Review, 
which  in  its  fifth  number  became  the  London  and 
Westminster  Review,  the  old  Westminster  being 
merged  with  it.  John  became  editor  of  this  Review, 
of  which  Sir  William  Molesworth  was  the  proprietor. 
He  continued  editor  for  five  years,  during  which  the 
Review  became  a  powerful  organ  of  public  opinion. 
It  was  designed  to  represent  the  '  philosophic  Radi- 
cals '  of  whom  great  hopes  were  for  a  time  enter- 
tained by  Mill,  not  a  few  of  them,  including  Mr.  Grote, 
having  been  returned  in  the  Reformed  Parliament. 
These  hopes,  however,  soon  vanished,  and  the  Review 
continued  more  memorable  during  the  time  of  his 
editorship,  for  his  own  articles  on  Tennyson,  De 
Tocqueville,  Armand  Carrel,  Carlyle,  Bentham,  and 
Coleridge,  than  for  anything  else.  In  these  papers 
the  author  gave  full  vent  to  his  altered  and  enlarged 
range  of  thought.  He  drew  off  from  the  narrower 
Benthamism  of  his  earlier  writings,  with  a  result  very 
distasteful  to  many  of  his  early  friends.  They  in 
their  turn  drew  back  from  the  Review.^  But  Mill  was 
now  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers,  and  was  able 
to  stand  on  his  own   feet  without  special  encourage- 

^  Seey.  S.  Mill :  a   Criticism,  by  Dr.  A.  Bain,  pp.  56-7. 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        227 

ment  from  any  quarter.  He  felt  himself  a  power 
both  in  the  intellectual  and  political  world;  and 
although  he  did  not  continue  beyond  the  year  1840 
to  edit  the  Review,  he  never  flinched  from  any  of  the 
broader  convictions  of  which  he  had  made  it  the 
vehicle.  He  remained  especially  proud  that  he  had 
vindicated  so  successfully  Lord  Durham's  Canadian 
policy,  and  contributed  to  establish  Carlyle's  long 
delayed  fame. 

During  all  this  time  Mill  was  elaborating  his  great 
work  on  Logic.  He  may  be  said  to  have  begun  this 
book  as  far  back  as  1830,  when  he  first  put  upon 
paper  certain  ideas,  afterwards  worked  into  his  pre- 
liminary chapter.  He  busied  himself  with  the  subject 
from  time  to  time,  till  in  the  summer  of  1838  he  set 
about  its  systematic  development ;  and  in  the  end  of 
1 84 1  he  had  the  book  ready  for  the  press.  It  was  his 
habit,  he  tells  us,  in  connection  with  the  preparation 
of  this  work,  to  write  all  his  books  and  articles  twice 
over.  A  draft  was  first  prepared  to  the  very  end 
of  the  subject — and  then  the  whole  begun  again  de 
nai'o — an  admirable  plan  for  giving  proportion  and 
due  effect  to  the  several  portions  of  a  book.  The 
System  of  Logic,  ready  by  the  end  of  1841,  was  not 
published  till  the  spring  of  1843.  It  immediately 
attracted  wide  attention.  The  author  confesses  him- 
self astonished  at  its  success.  On  this  book  more 
than  any  other  his  fame  will  rest. 

The  publication  of  his  Logic  may  be  said  to 
open  what  Mill  himself  calls  the  third  portion  of 
his  career,  when  he  became  an  established  reputa- 
tion in  philosophy,  and  rose  to  be  head  of  the 
school    which    his    father   founded.       For   whatever 


2  2S       Moveinents  of  Religions  Thought. 

changes  of  opinion  he  underwent,  and  however  far  he 
enlarged  his  general  ideas  in  hterature  and  education, 
he  remained  substantially  true  to  his  father's  philoso- 
phical standpoint.  He  is  at  particular  pains  to  point 
this  out  in  his  Autobiography,  and  to  show  that  he  lost 
nothing  that  was  good  in  his  old  mode  of  thought. 
But  it  was  unnecessary  to  give  any  assurance  of  this. 
The  System  of  Logic  is  in  itself  the  satisfactory 
evidence  that  he  stood  in  philosophy  where  his  father 
stood.  It  was,  and  in  some  respects  continues  to 
be,  the  most  complete  manual  of  the  experience- 
philosophy,  even  after  all  that  has  been  done  in 
that  line  during  the  last  forty  years.  With  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  and  others  that  philosophy  has 
entered  on  a  new  departure,  by  the  help  of  the 
principle  of  Evolution.  But  the  Logic  is  still  the 
most  complete  text-book  of  the  doctrine  which, 
according  to  the  author's  own  statement,  '  derives 
all  knowledge  from  experience,  and  all  moral  and 
intellectual  qualities  from  the  direction  given  to 
the  associations.'  It  is  at  the  same  time  the  best 
polemic  against  '  the  opposite  school  of  Metaphysics 
— the  ontological  and  "  innate  principles "  school.' 
The  ideas  which  it  embodies,  and  which  give  its 
chief  interest  to  the  work,  strike,  as  we  shall  see,  all 
spiritual  philosophy  at  the  root,  and  lead  to  the  sub- 
version of  revealed  religion. 

The  System  of  Logic  was  followed  in  1848 
by  the  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  which  more 
than  rivalled  the  success  of  the  former  work,  and  has 
also  taken  its  place  among  the  great  books  of  the 
time.  With  the  publication  of  this  volume  Mill's 
creative  activity  as  a  writer  may  be  said  to  cease. 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School .        229 

Some  of  his  most  interesting  writings  appeared  after 
this,  as  his  volume  on  Liberty  in  1859,  and  his  Exami- 
nation of  Sir  W.  Hamittons  PJiitosopliy  in  1 865  ;  but 
in  none  of  these  writings  is  the  constructive  effort  so 
great  as  in  these  main  works.  On  Liberty  was  probably 
the  most  popular  of  all  his  books,  as  it  is  the  most 
charming;  to  read.  There  are  few  minds  of  a  liberal 
turn  who  can  have  perused  it  for  the  first  time  with- 
out a  thrill  of  delight,  even  if  the  continued  advance 
of  liberal  thought  has  now  made  some  of  its  eloquence 
comparatively  commonplace.^  There  are  none  of  his 
writings  again  more  acute,  subtle,  and  in  part  strong, 
than  his  attack  on  the  Hamiltonian  philosophy.  Yet, 
as  Dr.  Bain  admits,  he  had  spent  his  force  as  an 
originator  on  his  two  larger  works.  They  contain  all 
the  pith  of  his  thinking ;  and  his  after  labours  were  in 
the  main  expository  and  polemical,  rather  than  con- 
structive. By  the  date  of  his  Political  Economy  (1848) 
he  had  acquired  all  the  elements  of  his  thinking, 
accumulated  all  his  stores,  among  the  last  of  which  were 
the  fertile  ideas  he  derived  from  the  study  of  Comte. 
His  mind  remained  fixed  from  this  time,  while  his  re- 
putation rapidly  grew.  He  certainly  brought  nothing 
further  to  the  support  of  his  special  principles.  The 
three  posthumous  Essays  on  Religion,  interesting  as 
they  are,  form  no  exception ;  for  our  purpose  they  are 
more  valuable,  perhaps,  than  any  other  of  hiswritings. 
They  enable  us,  along  with  his  autobiography,  to  see 

1  Charles  Kingsley,  when  he  first  took  up  the  volume  in  Parker's 
shop,  became  so  entranced  with  it  that  he  sat  down  and  read  it  through 
without  stopping.  As  he  left  the  shop  he  said  it  had  '  made  him  a 
clearer-headed,  braver-minded  man  on  the  spot.'  I  read  it  first  on  the 
railway  between  Oxford  and  London  with  something  of  the  same 
ennobhng  effect. 


230      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

more  clearly  into  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  his 
religious  opinions.  But  not  even  Mill's  greatest 
admirers — these  admirers,  indeed,  least  of  all — would 
claim  for  them  any  peculiar  intellectual  merit  among 
his  productions.  There  are,  in  fact,  prominent  traces 
of  weakness  in  all  of  them,  and  if  he  had  never  written 
anything  bearing  with  more  penetration  and  strength 
of  argument  upon  the  foundations  of  religion  than 
these  essays,  they  would  hardly  have  claimed  a  place 
in  these  lectures.  They  demand  from  us,  however, 
some  special  notice. 

But  we  must  first  endeavour  to  fix  Mill's  main 
significance  in  the  modern  development  of  religious 
thought.  This  significance  is  almost  exclusively  de- 
rived from  the  fundamental  principles  of  which  he 
was  the  expositor,  as  the  chief  teacher  of  the  experi- 
ence-philosophy in  his  day.  John  Mill  inherited  this 
philosophy  quite  as  much  as  most  Christian  thinkers 
inherit  opposite  principles.  His  Essays  on  Religion, 
his  volume  on  Hamilton,  as  well  as  many  of  his 
special  papers,  show  that  his  life  of  thought  was  a 
continued  advance  from  the  narrower  notions  of  his 
school.  Yet,  as  we  have  already  implied,  he  was, 
from  the  first,  and  continued  to  the  last,  true  to  its 
main  principles,  notwithstanding  all  the  advances  he 
made  in  mere  intellectual  and  poetic  feeling.  The 
doctrine  of  the  absolute  uniformity  of  Nature,  or  to 
put  it  in  the  language  which  he  himself  chiefly  adopts 
in  his  autobiography — the  docrine  of  the  necessity 
of  all  human  character  and  conduct,  no  less  than  of 
all  material  phenomena — was  his  cardinal  doctrine. 
His  love  of  liberty  in  all  human  affairs,  and  his 
eloquent  defence  of  Individualism,  never  touched  the 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        231 

root  principle  on  which  all  his  philosophy,  no  less 
than  his  father's  philosophy  rested,  and  which  came 
to  him  as  a  sort  of  religion.  He  never  ceased  to  be 
the  Apostle  of  Circumstance,^  as  opposed  alike  to 
Free  will  in  human  conduct  and  the  freedom  of  Divine 
Action  in  Nature,  although  with  a  wider  knowledge 
and  a  more  candid  perception  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
doctrine  than  most  of  his  school  had. 

His  doctrine  is  most  fully  expounded  in  the  famous 
chapter  '  of  the  Law  of  Universal  Causation '  in  his 
System  of  Logic?  From  his  own  point  of  view, 
and  the  postulate  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all 
his  thinking, — the  postulate,  namely,  that  all  our 
knowledge  is  derived  from  sensation, — this  chapter  is 
admirably  reasoned  and  conclusive.  But  like  Hume's 
famous  argument  about  miracles,  it  gets  all  its  force 
from  the  assumption  of  the  very  thing  to  be  proved. 
If  it  is  true,  as  Hume  maintained,  that  the  Laws  of 
Nature  are  established  by  an  unalterable  experience, 
of  course  such  a  thing  as  a  miracle  can  never  have 
happened.  No  testimony  can  be  of  the  slightest 
value  against  an  mialterable  experience.  But  then 
this  was  the  very  point  in  question.  Has  experience 
been  unalterable  f  That  a  philosopher  says  so  does 
not  settle  the  question.  No  amount  of  induction — in 
other  words,  no  conclusion  drawn  from  any  amount 

1  He  himself  well  says  of  his  father  in  his  Azitobiography : — '  His 
fundamental  doctrine  was  the  formation  of  all  human  character  by 
Circumstances,  through  the  universal  principle  of  association,  and 
the  consequent  unlimited  possibility  of  improving  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual condition  of  mankind  by  education.  Of  all  his  doctrines,  none 
was  more  important  than  this,  or  needs  more  to  be  insisted  upon.' — 
P.  108  (2). 

'•i  Chap.  V.  B.  III. 


232       Movements  of  Religiozis  Thought, 

of  observation  and  experiment  can  constitute  an 
absolute  truth,  or  convert  a  generality  of  science  into 
a  universal  principle.  Even  so,  Mill's  Law  of  U)ii- 
versal  Causation,  which  on  his  own  philosophical  basis 
is  irrefragable,  ceases  to  be  so  when  looked  at  more 
comprehensively.  If  all  our  knowledge  is  derived 
from  sensation — from  the  observation  and  gener- 
alised experience  of  our  senses — we  cannot  of  course 
have  any  knowledge  that  does  not  come  under 
the  law  of  scientific  induction.  The  unbroken  con- 
tinuities of  Nature  in  co-existence  or  succession  are  all 
that  we  can  ever  learn  in  this  way.  Nature  and  human 
life  present  themselves  to  us  as  an  endless  surface, 
linked  by  apparently  indissoluble  sequences.  It  has 
no  life  but  the  life  of  circumstance.  But  then  this  is 
the  very  question.  Is  all  our  knowledge  so  derived  ? 
Nay,  can  kftoivledge,  strictly  speaking,  arise  in  this  way 
at  all?  Could  we  even  get  experience,  properly  so 
called,  on  such  a  basis?  Experience  implies  unity, 
cohesion,  co-ordination.  But  is  not  sense  in  itself  a 
mere  repetition  of  vanishing  particulars,  which  come 
and  go  without  any  cohesion  ?  What  brings  order 
into  the  accidental  chaos  ?  Mere  association  ?  as 
supposed  by  Mill.  Is  it  not  rather  a  certain  creative 
power  of  the  mind  itself,  which  builds  up  mere  sense- 
accumulations  into  experience,  and  then  into  know- 
ledge ?  To  speak  of  knowledge  apart  from  experience 
is  of  course  absurd.  To  speak  of  experience  apart 
from  sense  is  equally  absurd.  All  our  knowledge  goes 
back  to  sense — to  our  contact  with  the  outer  world. 
It  is  primarily  dependent  on  sense.  But  mere  sense 
could  never  yield  it.  The  synthesis  of  the  inward  and 
outward  is  '  the  essential  fact  in  all  cognition.'     And 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        233 

this  analysis  of  cognition,  which  recognises  an  inward 
creative  as  well  as  an  outward  accumulative  element, 
cannot  be  disposed  of  by  mere  ridicule  of  '  innate 
principles.'  '  Innate  principles  '  may  be  exploded,  but 
an  innate  power,  which  is  itself  not  the  product  of 
sense,  cannot  be  dispensed  with. 

Mill  might  not  have  denied  this  analysis  so  far. 
He  came  in  the  end,  in  his  criticism  of  the  Hamilton 
philosophy,  to  a  species  of  Idealism,  or  '  possibility 
of  sensation '  as  the  root  of  knowledge.  But  the 
inner  mental,  no  less  than  the  outer  material  factor, 
was  to  him  a  mere  evolution  of  circumstances.  It 
had  no  originality.  It  was  itself  a  new  circumstance, 
the  outgrowth  of  physical  conditions.  This  is  the 
fundamental  antithesis  between  the  materialistic 
and  spiritualistic  schools,  and  needs  always  to  be 
broadly  stated.  To  the  one  school  man  in  his 
whole  nature  is  the  mere  growth  of  physical  forces. 
To  the  other  he  is  endowed  with  a  mind  which  may 
or  may  not  have  grown  along  with  Nature — although 
all  attempts  to  trace  a  mere  natural  growth  of  life  or 
mind  have  utterly  and  confessedly  failed — but  which 
is  in  itself,  in  its  essential  character,  absolutely  dis- 
tinct from  other  natural  products.  It  is  conscious, 
whereas  they  are  unconscious.  It  is  free,  whereas 
they  are  bound.  It  is  responsible,  whereas  they  are 
without  any  sense  of  obligation.  It  stands,  therefore, 
not  merely  by  any  religious  claim  made  for  it,  but  by 
its  own  intrinsic  being — all  that  makes  it  what  it 
essentially  is — outside  the  alleged  law  of  '  Universal 
Causation.' 

Not  only  so.  But  the  idea  of  Causation  itself  has 
its  root  in  the  very  distinction  of  mind  and  matter. 


234      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

It  arises  only  from  our  self-consciousness — our  per- 
sonal experience  of  ability  to  move  our  limbs,  or  to 
resist  our  natural  impulses.  We  have  no  other  index 
of  power.  Will,  in  short,  is  the  suggestion  of  Cause, 
which  we  transfer  to  the  world  at  large.  And  in  mak- 
ing such  a  transference,  we  follow  strictly,  as  it  has 
been  recently  said,  '  the  scientific  instinct  and  the  scien- 
tific process.  We  are  putting  into  the  same  class  the 
motions  that  we  observe  in  other  things  and  the  motions 
we  observe  in  ourselves.'  ^  The  idea  of  Cause  thus 
originated  '  becomes  expanded  into  law,  as  we  recog- 
nise its  communication  from  one  thing  to  another,' 
and  so  on  indefinitely  in  continuous  and  regular 
succession.  This  is  what  Mr.  Mill  calls  the  '  invari- 
ableness  '  of  the  order  of  Nature.  But '  invariableness  ' 
first  of  all  is  not  the  true  note  of  Causation.  This 
note  is  origination  and  not  order,  invariable  or  other- 
wise, as  he  constantly  makes  it.  The  word  retains  to 
the  last  the  traces  of  its  origin,  and  when  men  speak 
of  a  cause  they  do  not  mean  the  mere  antecedent 
of  a  phenomenon,  but  the  original  power  which  called 
it  into  being.  Secondly,  '  invariableness  '  can  only  be 
predicated,  even  of  the  order  of  Nature,  by  assuming 
that  there  is  nothing  behind  this  order,  and  that  our 
experience  of  its  uniformity  has  never  been  broken 
and  never  can  be  broken.  But  no  experience  can 
justify  a  conclusion  of  this  kind.  It  may  justify  a 
presumption ;  it  cannot  generate  an  absolute  and 
necessary  truth ;  and  especially  in  the  face  of  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  Power  behind  phenomena  that  lies  within 
the  very  idea  of  Cause  from  the  first.     We  cannot, 

1  Bishop     Temple's    Bampton    Lectures    on    the    Relation   between 
Religion  and  Science,  p.  21. 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        235 

without  inverting  the  order  of  knowledge,  convert 
the  external  uniformity  of  Nature  into  an  iron 
necessity,  which  de  facto  excludes  the  fact  through 
which  alone  we  have  been  able  to  rise  to  the  appre- 
hension of  Causation  or  uniformity  in  Nature  at  all. 

When  we  look  at  this  great  question  from  the 
moral  side,  Mr.  Mill's  cardinal  doctrine  becomes  still 
more  untenable.  As  even  science  may  be  said  to 
begin  with  will,  so  all  morality  and  religion  not  only 
begin,  but  end  with  the  same  central  fact  of  human 
life.  The  moral  law  has  no  meaning,  save  as  applied 
to  that  self-consciousness  within  us  which  is  ever  the 
same  amidst  all  the  changes  of  our  external  life,  and 
the  modifications  of  our  moral  growth.  The  com- 
mands which  it  lays  upon  us  are  commands  addressed 
to  our  wills — in  other  words,  to  ourselves — ever  the 
same  in  virtue  of  the  mysterious  gift  of  personality. 
It  is  only  thus  we  become  responsible,  and  in  contrast 
with  all  other  creatures  enter  within  the  circle  of  moral 
and  religious  aspiration.  If  the  will  be  a  fiction,  a 
mere  cluster  of  hereditary  instincts  indissolubly  bound 
together  by  the  law  of  association,  and  the  growth 
throughout,  therefore,  of  circumstance,  it  seems  unin- 
telligible how  the  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  should 
cling  to  us  as  they  do — how  in  short  what  we  mean 
by  conscience  should  arise.  The  sense  of  right  and 
wrong  rests  on  an  absolute  feeling  that  we  are  free 
to  choose  the  good  and  avoid  the  evil.  Moral  ideas 
are  no  doubt  largely  developed  by  association  and 
circumstance,  but  moral  acts  come  from  our  own  free 
choice  in  such  a  sense  at  least  as  that  the  deepest 
misery  may  spring  from  wrong  action.  It  seems 
impossible  to  explain   this  save  by   recognising  Will 


■0 


6      Movements  of  Religious  Thotight. 


as  an  original  power  within  us,  and  conscience  as  its 
Divine  guide.  If  Will  be  the  growth  of  circumstance, 
conscience  can  only  be  a  calculation  of  chances.  And 
how  in  such  a  case  should  it  ever  accuse  and  condemn 
us?  We  can  never  really  act  otherwise  than  we  do. 
And  yet  that  we  can  so  act,  and  have  frequently 
failed  so  to  act,  is  the  experience  of  every  higher 
nature.  The  sting  of  a  lost  good  is  that  we  ourselves 
lost  it.  The  misery  of  a  present  evil  is  that  we  our- 
selves did  it.  Once  admit  the  thought  that  the  good 
was  never  in  our  power,  and  the  evil  a  necessary 
sequence  in  our  life,  and  the  whole  fabric,  both  of 
religion  and  morality,  disappears.  Responsibility  in 
any  true  sense  vanishes.  Nay,  self-consciousness  be- 
comes a  dream.  For  the  very  essence  of  this  con- 
sciousness is  that  it  erects  itself  against  the  law  of 
causality,  which  is  supposed  to  bind  all  being  in  order, 
and  to  explain  all.  It  refuses  this  explanation.  It 
says,  '  I  am  not  bound.  I  am  free  to  choose  the  evil  or 
the  good.  I  am  more  than  nature,  or  any  product 
of  nature.  I  may  be  crushed  by  its  laws,  but  I  am 
more  than  any  of  its  laws.  I  have  that  within  me 
which  no  mere  circumstance  has  given.  I  have  will 
and  conscience,  and  divine  reason.  I  am  the  child 
of  God,  and  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  hath 
given  me  understanding.' 

All  true  morality  and  religion,  therefore,  imply  in 
man  a  breach  of  Mill's  law  of  natural  causation.  In 
other  words,  the  experience-philosophy,  of  which  he 
was  the  great  teacher,  is  a  philosophy  inadequate 
to  grasp  the  realities  of  human  nature  and  life. 
There  is  more  in  man  than  is  dreamt  of  in  this 
philosophy ;  and  the  whole  course  of  its  expositor's 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        237 

own  intellectual  development  was  so  far  an  evidence 
of  this.  He  maintained  to  the  last  that  character, 
like  all  natural  phenomena,  is  born  of  circumstance; 
but  he  allowed  for  what  he  called  the  action  of  the 
will  upon  circumstances,  and  seemed  to  himself  in 
this  way  to  discriminate  between  his  doctrine  of 
necessity  and  the  common  interpretation  of  that 
doctrine  as  fatalism.  But  his  reserves  were  merely 
sentimental ;  they  were  forced  upon  him  by  the 
urgency  of  facts  to  which  he  could  not  shut  his  eyes. 
They  did  not  spring  from  any  change  in  his  point  of 
departure ;  and  his  system  was  really  fatalistic,  what- 
ever he  thought  of  it.  He  held  it  with  less  clearness 
and  firmness  the  longer  he  lived.  He  had  neither 
the  hardihood  nor  the  coarseness  of  the  true  faith 
which  animated  his  father  and  his  father's  unhesitat- 
ing followers.  This  really  argued  that  he  had  higher 
elements  of  character  and  more  comprehension  of 
thought  than  they  had,  although  they  did  not  think 
so.  His  very  hesitations  in  the  full  acceptance  of 
his  father's  creed  were  tributes  to  a  more  expansive 
philosophy,  and  although  he  never  reached  the  clear 
heaven  of  such  a  philosophy,  he  left  behind  him 
enough  to  confound  the  partisans  of  that  narrow 
no-faith  which  have  made  such  a  boast  of  his  name. 

This  brings  us  to  the  consideration  of  his  special 
view  of  religion,  as  explained  in  his  posthumous 
essays.  It  is  evident  from  these  essays  that  the  sub- 
ject of  religion  fascinated  him,  studiously  as  he  had 
been  trained  without  any  knowledge  of  it.  Not  only 
so,  but  he  came  to  realise — with  all  his  loyalty  to  his 
father's  main  teaching — that  religion  was  a  far  more 
important  factor  in  human  life  than  he  had  been  led 


238      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

to  believe.  All  the  same  the  savour  of  his  hereditary- 
teaching  remained,  and  mixed  itself  with  all  his 
thought.  His  father's  pessimism,  for  example,  in- 
tensified by  a  vein  of  intellectual  pride,  partly  in- 
herited and  partly  his  own,  appears  prominently  in 
the  first  essay  on  '  Nature.'  James  Mill  thought  very 
little  of  the  world.  It  was  to  him  upon  the  whole  a 
bad  world.  Human  life  was  '  a  poor  thing  at  the 
best'  The  son  turned  the  father's  thought — which 
was  also  his  own — into  a  sort  of  philosophy.  It  is  diffi 
cult  to  say  whether  Christianity  was  more  obnoxious 
to  him  than  'the  optimistic  Deism  or  worship  of 
the  order  of  Nature,'  to  which  modern  scepticism 
has  so  much  inclined,  and  more  than  ever  since  his 
time.  A  'natural  religion'  like  that  recently  ex- 
pounded under  this  name,  would  have  seemed  to  him 
essentially  unreasonable.  Nature,  so  far  from  being 
to  him  an  object  of  admiration,  as  it  was  to  Words- 
worth and  the  author  of  Natural  Religion,  was,  on 
the  contrary,  a  cruel  and  mischievous  power.  '  All 
the  things  which  men  are  hanged  or  imprisoned  for 
doing  to  one  another,  are,'  in  his  opinion,  '  Nature's 
ever}'day  performances.'  No  writer  of  sane  mental 
comprehension  has  ever  drawn  such  an  indictment 
against  nature.  He  does  not  even  give  it  the  credit 
of  that  '  order '  of  which  he  elsewhere  speaks  so 
much.  Disorder  is  rather  '  a  counterpart  of  Nature's 
ways,'  he  says.  '  Anarchy  and  the  Reign  of  Terror 
are  overmatched  in  injustice,  even  as  death,  by  a 
hurricane  and  a  pestilence.' 

This  tone  of  superiority  to  the  world, — as  if  it 
might  have  been  better  if  they  had  had  the  making  of 
it,— is  a  remarkable  feature   in  the  intellectual   char- 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        239 

acter  of  both  the  Mills.  They  seem  to  have  been 
unconscious  of  the  strange  intellectual  presumption 
it  implied,  and  its  essential  inconsistency  with  the 
fundamental  principle  of  their  own  philosophy.  For 
if  Nature  be  supreme  in  its  facts  and  laws,  and  there 
be  nothing  but  a  development  of  Nature,  it  seems,  to 
say  the  least,  to  be  an  unreasonable  philosophical 
attitude  to  indulge  in  abuse  of  it  or  its  manifestations. 
Mill  not  only  does  this,  but  in  the  most  elaborate 
of  his  essays — that  on  Theism — he  may  be  said  to 
construct  a  Theistic  theory  on  his  recognition  of 
the  imperfections  of  the  world.  It  was  this  essay 
which,  more  than  the  others,  proved  a  stumbling- 
block  to  the  school  which  looked  to  him  as  its  chief 
apostle.  It  is  a  tribute  so  far  to  the  candour  and 
openness  of  mind  which  characterised  him  beyond 
all  the  other  members  of  his  school,  but  it  is  in 
some  respects  the  least  successful  of  all  his  writings. 
In  his  treatment  of  the  argument  for  a  First  Cause, 
he  recurs  to  the  old  thought  which  pervades  the 
chapter  on  Causation  in  the  Logic,  and  which  we  may 
be  excused  therefore  from  still  further  glancing  at. 
'  All  the  power  that  Will  possesses  over  phenomena,' 
he  contends,  *  is  shared  by  other  and  far  more  powerful 
agents,'  such  as  heat  and  electricity,  which  evolve 
motion  on  a  far  larger  scale  than  human  volition. 
And  what  right  have  we  therefore,  he  virtually  asks, 
just  as  Hume  did,  to  conceive  of  intelligent  will  or 
mind  as  the  original  cause  of  all  things  ?  '  what 
peculiar  privilege  has  this  little  agitation  of  the  brain 
which  we  call  thought,  that  we  must  make  it  the 
model  of  the  universe  ?  '  None  at  all,  we  admit,  on  a 
mere  phenomenal  basis.     But  once  suppose  that  there 


240      Movcme7its  of  Religions  Thong  Jit. 

is  more  in  heaven  and  earth  than  we  can  gather  from 
the  knowledge  of  phenomena — that  man  is  more  than 
matter — that  mind  is  more  than  any  combination  of 
matter,  and  all  analogy  between  mental  force  and 
other  forms  of  force  disappears.  Does  it  not  even 
disappear  when  the  facts  are  looked  at  in  themselves  ? 
All  forms  of  material  force  are  obviously  in  them- 
selves mere  transformations.  They  operate  uncon- 
sciously ;  they  are  merely  changes — transferences.  We 
recognise  force  in  them  because  we  have  experience 
of  force  in  ourselves  ;  but  they  do  not  themselves 
yield  the  idea  of  force.  We  could  never  get  the  idea 
from  them  ;  and  therefore  Comte,  the  most  consistent 
of  all  phenomenalists,  would  have  the  term  disused 
as  misleading — as  implying  something  of  which  we 
have  no  knowledge.  The  idea  of  force  is  only  given 
in  the  action  of  mind  ;  it  is  the  product  of  self-con- 
sciousness— of  nothing  else.  And  does  not  this 
separate  conscious  Will  from  all  other  facts  in 
Nature  ?  It  is  confessedly  intranslatable.  No  pro- 
cess of  merely  natural  change  can  generate  it.  Does 
it  not,  therefore,  by  its  very  character,  stand  apart 
from  the  category  of  matter,  and  compel  us  to  recog- 
nise its  distinction  ?  Does  not,  in  short,  the  purely 
scientific  view  of  mind,  as  something  in  experience 
absolutely  apart  from  all  other  motor  forces  in  the 
world,  lead  us  up  to  the  theological  view  that  mind, 
as  self-conscious,  is  a  singular  power — an  efflux  from 
a  higher  Source  than  matter  ? 

It  may  be  impossible  to  prove  Mind  to  be  what  the 
Christian  heart  believes  it  to  be,  and  so  to  infer  that 
the  Primal  Force  or  First  Cause  of  the  Universe 
must  be  a  Supreme  Mind — and  nothing   less.       Facts 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        241 

are  so  far  in  favour  of  the  theistic  hypothesis.  So 
far  as  experience  extends,  Mind  cannot  be  generated 
from  any  other  or  inferior  force,  or  any  combination 
of  Matter  and  Force.  On  this  ground  the  Theist 
\\o\d?.  \t  to  he  sui  generis — a  Divine  particle  implying 
a  Divine  Author.  But  even  if  this  cannot  be  proved, 
it  seems  evident  that  a  Divine  Author  or  Creative 
Mind  can  only  be  argued  on  the  basis  that  Mind  is 
something  more  than  any  mere  function  of  matter. 
What  otherwise  comes  of  the  principle  of  Design  ? — 
with  which  Mr.  Mill,  no  less  than  the  Theist,  largely 
works.  He  is  greatly  in  favour  of  Design  in  Creation. 
Repudiating  all  other  evidences  of  Theism,  he  thinks 
that  the  argument  from  marks  of  Design  in  Nature 
is  'of  a  really  scientific  character.'  He  does  not 
allow  the  argument  to  the  extent  of  the  Christian 
Theist.  The  '  marks  of  Design '  appear  to  him  to 
imply  an  Evil  as  well  as  a  Good  Power,  or  at  least 
an  imperfect  Power.  There  is  evidence  of  benevo- 
lent Design,  but  it  is  also  evident  he  thinks  that 
benevolent  Design  has  been  hemmed  in  and  hindered 
by  lack  of  adequate  power  or  intractableness  of 
material.  But  leaving  aside  the  character  of  his  con- 
clusion, of  which  we  have  already  said  enough,  is  there 
not  a  radical  weakness  at  the  root  of  any  Design  argu- 
ment in  his  hands  ?  for  if  mind  be  a  mere  quality  or 
outcome  of  matter,  we  may  certainly  ask,  with  Hume, 
why  should  it  be  made  '  the  model  of  the  universe  '  ? 
What  right  have  we  to  transfer  it  to  natural  pheno- 
mena at  all  as  their  explanation  ?  Design  is  only 
intelligible  as  the  purposeful  operation  of  an  intelli- 
gent will.  It  is  essentially  the  expression  of  such  a 
will.     And  is  this  not  already  to  own  an  intelligence 

Q 


242      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

behind  the  order  of  Nature  ?  Does  not  Theism  of  any 
kind,  in  short,  even  such  Theism  as  Mr.  Mill's,  imply 
a  metaphysical  basis — an  intelligent  will  operating 
behind  the  changes  of  experience  ;  while  a  philosophy 
like  Mr.  Mill's,  which  ab  initio  denies  that  there  is 
anything  at  all  behind  experience,  and  makes  the  will 
itself  merely  a  phenomenon,  really  leaves  no  room  for 
Will  in  Nature  at  all.  No  analogy  of  mere  experi- 
ence can  enable  us  to  find  in  Nature  what  we  do  not 
recognise  in  ourselves.  The  whole  fabric  of  Mr. 
Mill's  Theism  therefore  tumbles  to  the  ground.  It  is 
the  old  story  again  of  Nullus  spiritus  in  Microcosmo, 
nullus  Dens  in  Macrocosvio.  Blot  out  the  Divine  in  Man, 
and  no  Divine  can  be  found  in  Nature,  Soul  and 
God  are  essentially  co-relative,  and  if  soul  is  denied, 
God,  or  a  Creative  Mind,  can  nowhere  be  found. 

It  is  remarkable  how  far  Mr.  Mill  is  disposed 
to  recognise  Design  in  Nature — as  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  eye  for  example.  Sight  not  being 
precedent,  but  subsequent  to  the  organic  struc- 
ture of  the  eye,  this  structure  can  only  be  ex- 
plained by  an  antecedent  idea  as  the  efficient  cause. 
'  And  this  at  once  marks  the  organ  as  proceeding 
from  an  intelligent  Will.'  But  is  not  the  idea  of  an 
intelligent  Will  essentially  metaphysical  ?  It  has  no 
meaning  as  a  mere  educt  of  experience.  Intelligence 
may  be  predicated  on  a  mere  basis  of  observation, 
but  an  intelligent  Will — Mind  as  a  creative  or  origi- 
nal agent — is  something  deeper  than  any  mere  ex- 
perience, and  lies  at  the  background  of  all  experience. 
We  cannot  play  with  words  in  this  manner ;  we 
cannot  use  '  Design '  and  speak  of  '  an  intelligent 
will,'  and    yet  maintain  a  merely  phenomenal  basis. 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  aiid  his  School.        243 

The  distinction  of  the  two  systems  of  thought  is 
radical,  and  there  is  no  binding  the  two  together. 
Atheism  is  the  consistent  result  of  Phenomenalism, 
and  by  its  very  premisses  shuts  out  the  Divine  both 
in  Man  and  Nature.  It  holds  all  life  throughout  in 
its  everlasting  grasp,  and  there  is  no  getting  behind 
it.  Because,  ex  hypotJiesi,  there  is  nothing  behind, — 
there  is  no  metaphysic. 

There  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  therefore  that  what 
were  supposed  to  be  Mill's  earlier  views  were  the  true 
logical  outcome  of  his  mode  of  thought,  far  more 
than  the  pallid  Theism  propounded  by  him  in  his 
posthumous  essay,  which  recognised  a  Creator,  but 
denied  to  Him  either  full  benevolence,  or  the  power 
to  carry  his  benevolent  purposes  into  effect.  A  God 
thus  limited — whose  hand  is  shortened  that  it  can 
not  save,  is  no  God  at  all,  and  no  religion  worth 
speaking  of  could  rest  on  such  a  basis. 

It  may  be  asked,  then,  What  is  the  value  of  Mr. 
Mill's  thinking  upon  religion  ?  Is  it  not  purely 
negative  ?  Even  if  it  were  so,  it  would  claim  our 
attention.  The  advocates  of  a  thesis  can  never 
overlook  the  anti-thesis,  and  those  who  defend  it. 
The  very  breadth  of  Mr.  Mill's  negations  and  the 
negations  of  his  school  has  been  of  service  to 
religious  thought.  The  thoroughness  of  his  logical 
analysis  on  one  side  has  led  to  a  more  thorough 
analysis  on  the  other  side.  The  ideas  of  Order,  of 
Miracle,  of  Free  Will,  have  all  come  forth  from  his 
searching  logic  more  clear  and  intelligible.  They 
have  been  set  in  a  higher  light,  and  Christian  reason 
has  come  to  see  hov/  unworthy  were  some  of  its  old 
conceptions  on  such  subjects. 


244      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

But  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  has  not  merely  done  this 
negative  work  in  religious  thought.  He  has  done 
much  more.  The  effect  of  his  thoroughgoing  criti- 
cism has  been  to  make  clearer  than  before  the  roots 
of  the  great  opposing  lines  of  thought,  on  which 
all  higher  speculation  rests.  In  the  end,  on  either 
side,  a  postulate  stares  us  in  the  face.  Man  is 
either  divine  from  the  first — a  free  spiritual  being 
standing  apart  from  all  nature, — or  he  is  essentially- 
material.  On  the  latter  basis,  no  religion  in  the  old 
sense  can  be  based.  All  attempts  to  find  spirit  in 
matter,  if  spirit  is  not  already  presupposed  as  prior 
to  matter,  is  a  mere  futile  imagination.  All  at- 
tempts to  reach  God  through  Nature,  the  Unseen 
through  the  seen,  must  necessarily  fail.  We  can  never 
gain  from  natural  law  anything  but  some  product 
of  that  law.  Once  bring  man  within  the  chain  of 
causation  binding  the  life  of  nature,  and  there  is  no 
rational  outlet  towards  the  Divine.  The  Divine  may 
be  held  by  faith  as  an  hypothesis  running  parallel 
with  the  natural ;  but  it  cannot  in  such  a  case  be 
established  on  any  grounds  of  reason.  This  result 
was  apparent  enough  long  ago,  when  Hume  de- 
lighted to  emphasise  the  absolute  separation  between 
faith  and  reason ;  but  it  has  been  scientifically  ex- 
hibited by  Mill.  He  shrank  from  the  downright 
atheism  to  which  his  principles  inevitably  lead ;  but 
the  real  drift  of  these  principles  is  nowhere  obscure. 
Determinism  in  philosophy  lands  in  the  negation 
of  all  religion.  Religion  may  be  tacked  on  by 
faith  or  superstition  to  a  Determinist  Philosophy  or 
Doctrine  of  Necessity  ;  but  it  cannot  be  rationally 
evolved  from   it.      And   thinkers    like  Baden  Powell 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        245 

in  our  own  time,  or  Chalmers  and  Jonatlnn  Ed- 
wards in  former  times,  who  attempted  to  combine 
Determinism  with  Christianity,  have  all  failed,  with 
whatever  power  of  argument.  They  started  from  a 
wrong  beginning.  The  marches  between  the  great 
lines  of  thought  have  been  thoroughly  cleared  by 
help  of  Mill's  logic  and  other  books  of  the  same 
school.  They  are  not  likely  to  be  obscured  again ; 
and  this  of  itself  is  to  have  done  a  great  service  to 
religious  thought. 

But  yet,  again,  Mill  has  done  service  in  vindicating 
everywhere  the  moral  side  of  religion.  It  was  in  fact 
his  tendency  in  all  his  writings  to  confound  morality 
with  religion.  Setting  aside,  as  he  did,  the  Divine 
as  an  imaginary  sphere,  and  yet  recognising  so 
strongly  the  moral  and  social  bonds  that  make  so 
large  a  part  of  religion,  it  was  inevitable  that  he 
should  exalt  these  human  aspects  of  the  subject.  They 
were  estimated  not  unduly  in  themselves,  but  dispro- 
portionately in  comparison  with  others.  But  the  very 
emphasis  with  which  our  philosopher  dwelt  on  moral 
attributes  in  relation  to  the  Divine  Being,  as  well  as 
to  human  society,  was  of  great  value.  If  it  tended 
to  bring  down  religion  from  heaven  to  earth,  it  also 
tended  to  purge  the  Heavenly  Ideal  of  all  grosser 
taint.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth  than 
the  picture  of  the  Christian  God  given  by  both  the 
Mills ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  there  lies  in  all 
religious  systems  an  inclination  to  conceive  of  God 
more  or  less  after  an  arbitrary  manner,  as  dealing  with 
mankind  on  other  principles  than  those  of  pure 
Morality,  notwithstanding  that  this  moral  concep- 
tion of  the    Divine    is    everywhere    supreme    in  the 


246      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Gospels.  This  is  a  perilous  inclination,  and  not 
undeserving  the  indignation  it  excited  in  their 
minds.  The  famous  passage  in  the  Examinatio7i  of 
Hamilton's  Philosophy,  which  sent  a  thrill  through 
many  Christian  hearts,  had  a  tinge  in  it  of  that 
intellectual  pride  of  which  we  have  already  spoken ; 
but  it  also  breathed  a  fine  moral  intensity.^  Nothing 
but  degradation  can  come  to  religion  from  lowering  the 
Divine  Ideal  beneath  the  Ideal  of  the  highest  good 
that  we  can  ourselves  conceive.  The  true  ideal  of 
Christian  thought  is  not  only  more  real,  but  more 
perfect  and  beautiful  than  any  human  ideal  whatever. 

We  have  spoken  in  the  main  of  Mr.  John  Stuart 
Mill  throughout  this  lecture,  and  rightly  so ;  for 
all  the  special  influences  of  his  school  were  concen- 
trated in  him.  He  was  himself  more  than  all  its 
other  members.  Two  other  names,  however,  claim 
to  be  mentioned  before  we  close. 

The  first  of  these,  Mr.  Grote's,  is  by  itself,  and  in 

^  '  If,  instead  of  the  "  glad  tidings  "  that  there  exists  a  Being  in  whom 
all  the  excellencies  which  the  highest  human  mind  can  ever  conceive 
exist  in  a  degree  inconceivable  to  us,  I  am  informed  that  the  world  is 
ruled  by  a  Being  whose  attributes  are  infinite,  but  what  they  are  we 
cannot  learn,  nor  what  are  the  principles  of  his  government,  except  that 
the  highest  human  morality,  which  we  are  capable  of  conceiving,  does 
npt  sanction  them,  convince  me  of  it,  and  I  will  bear  my  fate  as  I 
may.  But  when  I  am  told  that  I  must  believe  this,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  call  this  Being  by  all  the  names  which  express  and  affirm  the 
highest  human  morality,  I  say  in  plain  terms  that  I  will  not.  What- 
ever power  such  a  Being  may  have  over  me,  there  is  one  thing  which 
he  shall  not  do.  He  shall  not  compel  me  to  worship  him.  I  will  call 
no  Being  good  who  is  not  what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that  epithet  to 
my  fellow-creatures ;  and  if  such  a  Being  can  sentence  me  to  Hell 
for  not  so  calling  him,  to  Hell  I  will  go.' — Exam,  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton's  Philosophy,  pp.  123—4. 


yohn  Sluart  Mill  and  his  School.        247 

connection  with  his  own  special  province  of  Greek 
hterature  and  history,  a  great  name,  inferior  to  none 
in  the  nineteenth  century.  But  it  has  httle  bearing 
comparatively  upon  our  subject.  Mr.  George  Grote 
was  in  philosophy  and  general  intellectual  spirit  the 
pupil  of  James  Mill.  He  came  under  his  influence 
about  1 8 19,  when  Mill  was  about  46  years  of  age, 
in  the  very  height  of  his  intellectual  power,  and  Grote 
himself  was  25  years  of  age.  Previously  he  had  been 
devoted  to  his  profession  (banking)  and  study,  but 
without  showing  any  marked  religious  or  political 
tendencies.  His  mother  is  said  to  have  been  strongly 
inclined  to  Calvinistic  religion,  of  which  there  is 
no  trace  in  the  son.  Possibly  it  may  have  inclined 
him,  by  way  of  reaction,  as  in  similar  cases,  to  the 
opposite  principles  which  he  soon  imbibed.  The 
original  bond  of  union  between  Mill  and  Grote 
was  Mr.  David  Ricardo,  the  well-known  political 
economist,  in  connection  with  whose  studies  the 
younger  mind  chiefly  sought  instruction  at  the 
hands  of  one  whom  he  felt  to  be  a  master.  But  the 
ascendancy  of  Mill's  influence  soon  showed  itself, 
not  only  in  such  subjects,  but  still  more  in  the  views 
adopted  by  Grote  regarding  Political  Philosophy, 
Theology,  and  Ethics.  According  to  Mrs.  Grote,  her 
husband  soon  found  himself 'enthralled  in  the  circle  of 
Mill's  speculations,  and  after  a  year  or  two  of  intimate 
commerce,  there  existed  but  little  difference  in  point 
of  opinion  between  master  and  pupil.  The  pupil  not 
only  imbibed  what  may  be  reasonably  called  the 
opinions,  but  no  less  the  prejudices  of  his  master,' 
Mr.  Mill  entertained  a  profound  feeling  against  the 
Established  Church,  and  a  corresponding   dislike  of 


248      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

its  members,  and  Mr.  Grote  was  carried  away  in  the 
same  '  current  of  antipathy.'  There  is  an  unconscious 
irony  in  Mrs.  Grote's  description.  She  seems  to  think 
it  creditable  to  her  husband,  rather  than  otherwise, 
that  he  should  have  shared  Mill's  narrow  dogmatism 
and  prejudices,  no  less  than  his  reasoned  conclusions. 

There  is  no  evidence  in  Grote's  life,  as  related  by 
his  widow,  that  he  himself  ever  examined  the  reli- 
gious problems  whose  negative  settlement  he  accepted 
with  such  a  curious  deference  from  James  Mill. 
Masterly  and  critical  as  his  intellect  was  in  his  own 
departments  of  study,  he  is  a  striking  example  of 
a  common  characteristic  of  the  course  of  modern 
negative  speculation.  The  basis  of  this  speculation 
is  professedly  inquiry.  It  is  supposed  by  those  whom 
its  current  has  swept  away  so  abundantly  in  recent 
times  to  be  the  result  of  the  irresistible  progress  of 
the  human  intellect.  Yet  no  body  of  religious  dis- 
ciples have  ever  followed  the  voice  of  authority  with 
more  unhesitating  decision  than  a  large  proportion  of 
the  professed  army  of  Modern  Unbelief.  They  have 
surrendered  themselves  with  the  most  melancholy 
monotony  to  the  voice  of  some  master  or  other,  with- 
out any  genuine  inquiry  on  their  own  part,  or  even 
any  knowledge  sometimes  of  the  real  character  of  the 
conclusions  from  which  they  dissent.  It  is  indeed  a 
pitiful  comment  on  the  weakness  of  human  nature 
that  the  anti-Christendom  of  modern  times  has  re- 
produced in  flagrant  forms  two  of  the  worst  vices  of 
Mediaeval  Christendom — its  intolerance  and  vulgar 
deference  to  authority. 

Apparently  the  negations  as  to  religion  into  which 
George   Grote's  mind  settled   thus   early,  under  the 


yohn  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        249 

teaching  of  James  Mill,  never  left  him.  He  dismissed 
altogether  and  with  contempt  the  subject  of  Theology 
from  his  mind.  The  '  antipathies  of  his  teacher,'  it  is 
admitted  by  Mrs.  Grote,  '  coloured  his  mind  through 
the  whole  period  of  his  ripe  meridian  age,  and  inspired 
and  directed  many  of  the  important  actions  of  his 
life.'  This  is  a  somewhat  sad  confession  to  make, 
but  it  is  made  without  any  shame,  and  is,  no  doubt, 
honest.  There  was  a  certain  element  of  loyalty  in 
Grote's  devotion,  and  a  certain  simplicity — it  is  im- 
possible to  say,  largeness  of  mind — in  the  enthusiasm 
with  which  he  maintained  the  negations  of  his  early 
creed,  and  even  quarrelled  with  James  Mill's  illustrious 
son,  as  being  a  comparatively  unfaithful  advocate  of 
'  the  true  faith,'  according  to  his  father.  If  there 
are  any  of  John  Stuart  Mill's  writings  more  nobly 
creditable  to  him  than  others — more  marked  by 
luminous  and  truly  wise  comprehension,  it  is  his 
two  articles  on  Bentham  and  Coleridge,  which  ap- 
peared respectively  in  1838  and  in  1840,  m  \\\q.  Lo7idon 
aJid  Westmijistcr  Review,  and  are  found  in  the  first 
volume  of  his  collected  Discussions.  But  for  the 
very  reason  that  all  open  minds  must  admire  these 
writings,  they  were  particularly  offensive  to  the 
'  straitest  sect '  of  his  father's  school,  and  to  none 
more  so  than  to  Grote  and  his  wife.  There  is  an  un- 
pleasant revelation  on  this  subject — to  which  we  have 
already  adverted — in  Dr.  Bain's  volume.^  No  ortho- 
dox teachers,  at  variance  on  some  abstruse  point  of 
their  common  divinit}',  could  use  more  disrespectful 
language  to  one  another  than  Mrs.  Grote  does  in  con- 
veying her  own  and  her   husband's  opinion  of  what 

V-  S.  Mill :  a  Criticism,  pp.  56-57. 


250      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

she  is  pleased  to  call  *  the  stuff  and  nonsense  '  of  these 
papers. 

Mr.  Grote  must  be  pronounced,  therefore,  more 
of  a  Millite  than  John  Stuart  Mill  himself  His 
attitude  in  the  well-known  controversy  as  to  the 
Chair  of  Logic  in  University  College  in  1866, 
when  Dr.  James  Martineau  was  a  candidate,  and 
was  defeated  almost  entirely  by  his  influence,  is 
an  unpleasant  illustration  of  the  same  extreme 
tendency.  The  event  is  not  one  on  which  we 
are  called  to  dwell ;  but  it  is  highly  significant,  as 
showing  how  thoroughly  so  great  an  intellect  can 
shut  out  all  the  influence  of  higher  religious  specu- 
lation, and  intrench  itself  with  undeviating  com- 
placency within  the  narrowest  limits  on  so  great  a 
subject.  This  very  intensity  of  negative  dogmatism 
made  Grote,  to  some  extent,  a  power  in  his  time 
even  in  relation  to  religion  ;  it  is  the  warrant  of  our 
touching  his  career  at  all  in  a  manner  in  which  we 
would  rather  have  refrained  from  doing,  seeing  how 
great  a  figure  he  is  otherwise.  But  the  limits  within 
which  he  confined  his  mind  on  this  subject  prove 
sufficiently  that  he  was  not,  in  any  real  sense,  a 
teacher,  and  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  exercised 
any  definite  influence  on  the  development  of  religious 
thought. 

George  Henry  Lewes  was  in  all  respects  a  different 
type  of  man,  versatile,  accomplished,  in  a  sense 
learned — acute  and  ingenious  as  a  philosophical 
thinker.  We  have  no  means  of  tracing  the  growth  of 
his  negative  convictions,  but  they  were  fully  matured 
in   1845,  when  the  first  volume  of  his  Biograpliical 


John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        2  5 1 

History  of  Philosophy  appeared.  One  of  the  chief 
notes  of  this  book — in  its  earliest  and  latest  form 
alike/  its  characteristic  note — was  its  antipathy  to 
philosophical  theology,  and  to  all  the  fundamental 
conceptions  on  which  it  rests.  Mr.  Lewes's  idea  of 
the  history  of  philosophy  was  very  like  the  popular 
notion  of  the  play  of  Hamlet  with  the  part  of  Hamlet 
missed  out.  He  did  not  believe  in  any  higher  or 
spiritual  thought.  All  metaphysic  was  to  him  an 
absurdity.  It  was  merely  *  the  art  of  amusing  one's- 
self  with  method ' — '  I'art  de  s'egarer  avec  methode.' 
No  definition  can  be  wittier  or  truer,  he  thought. 

Mr.  Lewes  had  studied  John  Stuart  Mill's  Logic 
and  Comte's  Cours  de  Philosophie  Positive,  and  these 
he  accepted  as  his  philosophical  Bible.  All  his 
earlier  teaching — for  he  assumed  in  all  his  graver 
writings  more  or  less  the  role  of  a  teacher — was  drawn 
from  those  two  sources.  He  originated  no  special 
line  of  thought.  He  was  the  bold  usher  of  the  modern 
scientific  spirit,  and  his  influence  chiefly  consisted  in 
the  unalloyed  enthusiasm  with  which  he  pushed  its 
premisses  to  their  legitimate  conclusion.  His  popular 
Exposition  of  the  Positive  Philosophy,  which  first 
appeared  in  a  succession  of  papers  in  the  newspaper 
known  as  The  Leader,  probably  introduced  the  name 
and  the  principles  of  Comte  for  the  first  time  to  many 
readers  in  this  country.  He  had  admirable  gifts  as 
a  writer,  whatever  we  may  think  of  his  powers  as  a 
thinker.  His  exposition  was  marked  by  a  rare 
lucidity,   and   had  the  charm  of  interest,  even  when 

1  It  was  first  published  in  four  small  volumes  in  Knight's  Shilling 
Series,  and  finally  in  two  large  library  volumes  in  1867.  The  History 
was  greatly  enlarged  in  its  latest  form. 


252       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

least  satisfactory.  Much  of  a  Frenchman  in  many  of 
his  ways,  he  had  the  French  gift  of  facile  and  happy 
expression. 

We  do  not  touch  Mr.  Lewes's  later  philosophical 
writings  beginning  with  his  important  work  on  Pro- 
blems of  Life  and  Mind  m  1874.  They  do  not  come 
within  our  present  period  of  review.  But  he  was 
certainly  a  recognisable  factor  in  the  formation  of 
negative  opinion  during  the  fifth  and  sixth  decades 
of  the  century ;  *  nor  is  there  any  reason  to  doubt — 
doubtful  as  the  fact  long  remained  in  many  minds 
looking  at  his  earlier  writings — that  he  was  a  really 
earnest  thinker  almost  religiously  interested  in  the 
doctrines  he  expounded.  Under  the  persiflage  of 
his  style  he  seems  to  have  hidden  a  laborious  and 
earnest  purpose.  This  is  placed  beyond  doubt  by 
the  reflected  light  which  the  recent  life  of  George 
Eliot  throws  upon  him  as  her  studious  companion 
for  so  many  years.  N.o  candid  reader  can  refuse 
to  admit, — whatever  estimate  he  may  otherwise 
form  of  these  volumes, — that  Lewes's  character  and 
mental  ambition  both  appear  in  a  better  aspect 
than  many  before  would  have  been  disposed  to 
regard  them.  We  may  differ  from  him  and  the 
principles  which  lay  at  the  root  of  all  his  mental 
work,  but  he  was  plainly  a  man  who  had  convic- 
tions, and  who  devoted  his  life  with  an  increasing 
devotion  to  their  propagation.  He  was  by  no  means 
an  original,  nor  perhaps,  even  in  his  latest  efforts,  a 

^  '  Mr.  Lewes  had  a  letter  from  a  working  man  at  Leicester  who  said 
that  he  and  some  fellow-students  met  together  on  a  .Sunday  to  read 
the  book  aloud  {Biographical  History  of  Philosophy')  and  discuss  it.' — - 
Gsorge  Eliot's    Life,  vol.  i.  p.  467. 


yohii  Stuart  Mill  and  his  School.        253 

profound  worker  in  the  great  modern  anti-theological 
school.  But  at  any  rate  it  was  not  out  of  mere  light- 
ness of  heart  that  he  joined  the  army  of  Negationists. 
He  believed  he  had  something  better  than  any 
theology  to  giv^e  his  generation,  and  if  his  belief  was 
delusive  it  was  at  least  no  unworthy  motive  that 
inspired  it. 

Christian  thought  may  learn  a  good  deal  even  from 
works  like  Lewes's.  There  was  an  admirable  directness 
and  lucidity  in  many  of  his  anti-theological  arguments. 
His  very  exaggerations, — as  in  his  frequent  antitheses 
of  law  and  will,  science  and  moral  freedom, — served 
to  bring  out  confusions  apt  to  underlie  forms  of 
Christian  opinion,  just  as  George  Eliot's  trenchant 
exposure  of  Cummingism  served  to  bring  out  the  crudi- 
ties of  popular  religion.  Thought  that  is  really  true 
and  well  founded  never  suffers  from  such  exposures. 
Its  weaknesses  are  cast  out  in  the  fierce  light  that  is 
made  to  beat  upon  it.  Whatever  it  may  have  to 
throw  away  as  useless  encumbrance  in  the  conflict, 
it  comes  out  tried  as  by  fire,  and  hence  purified  and 
enlarged  in  its  central  and  essential  principles. 


VII. 

'  Broad  Church.' 

FREDERICK  DENISON  MAURICE  AND 
CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

TT  is  remarkable  within  how  brief  a  period  all  the 
forces  of  thought  which  we  have  reviewed  in  the 
preceding  lectures  were  comprised.  Our  earliest 
starting-point  was  1820,  when  Mr.  Erskine's  first 
book  was  published.  But  it  can  hardly  be  said  that 
there  was  any  movement  of  fresh  intelligence  in 
religion  till  the  appearance  of  Coleridge's  Aids  to 
Reflection  in  1825.  This  third  decade  of  the  century 
also  marks  the  rise  of  the  early  Oriel  School.  The 
next  decade  gives  us  not  only  the  rise  but  the 
decline  of  the  original  Oxford  movement.  Carlyle's 
characteristic  principles  were  all  worked  out  when  he 
went  to  London  in  1834;  and  John  Stuart  Mill,  the 
latest  factor  in  the  series  of  movements,  had  elabor- 
ated his  Logic  and  his  cardinal  doctrines  by  1843. 
Even  the  Biographical  History  of  Philosophy,  if  it 
deserves  to  be  mentioned,  does  not  bring  us  later 
than  the  year  1845-6.  It  is  true  that  the  modifica- 
tions of  religious  opinion  which  began  with  Mr. 
Erskine  and  Coleridge  had  still,  as  we  shall  see  in 
this  lecture,  a  definite  course  to  run ;  while  the 
negative  mode  of  thought  which  had  set  in  with 
254 


F.  D.  Maurice  mid  Charles  Kingslcy.    255 

the  Mills,  and  was  diligently  propagated  by  Lewes 
and  others,  was  far  from  having  spent  itself  New 
and  fertile  developments  were  awaiting  it  in  the 
writings  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  others.  But 
these  developments  belong  to  what  may  be  called  the 
scientific  epoch  of  Negativism  or  Agnosticism,  with 
which  our  present  lectures  are  not  concerned. 
What  especially  deserves  notice  at  present  is  the 
rapidity  with  which  a  crowd  of  new  ideas  which 
only  commenced  with  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of 
the  century  developed  themselves.  It  was  1825  before 
they  had  begun  to  move  the  national  mind;  by  1845 
they  had  not  spent  their  strength,  but  had  attained 
to  their  full  momentum.  A  period  of  about  twenty 
years  had  seen  them  rise  in  quick  succession  and 
grow  to  their  full  height.  There  has  been  no  more 
vital  or  germinant  epoch  in  the  history  of  British 
thought. 

The  natural  result  followed.  With  the  significant 
exception, — which  now  awaits  our  attention, — there 
set  in  a  period  of  sceptical  languor.  The  failure 
of  the  Oxford  movement  especially  produced  a  strong 
reaction,  which  worked  powerfully  in  many  minds  to 
the  distrust  of  all  religious  truth.  This  was  the 
time  of  which  Mr.  Froude  speaks  in  his  life  of 
Carlyle,  when  he  and  a  companion  band  of  truth- 
seekers  were  driven  into  the  wilderness  in  search  of 
something  in  which  they  could  believe — some  cer- 
tainty on  which  they  could  stand.  He  and  others 
found  a  refuge  in  Carlylism,  but  many  found  no 
such  refuge.  His  own  early  volumes — now  rarely 
met  with — The  Shadows  of  the  Clouds  (1847)  and 
the  Nemesis  of  Faith  (1849);  the  poems  of  Clough, 


256      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

who  at  this  time  broke  away  from  Oxford  and  re- 
signed his  fellowship;  the  Phases  of  Fait] i  of  Francis 
Newman  (1849),  who  then  also  parted  with  his  early 
Evangelicalism ;  the  struggles  after  a  higher  belief 
which  meet  us  in  the  lives  of  Kingsley  and  Frederick 
Robertson ;  all  testify  to  the  sceptical  weariness 
which  in  these  years  overtook  many  minds  of  the 
younger  generation.  No  finer  spirit  than  Clough's  was 
ever  wrecked  on  the  ocean  of  doubt,  and  Frederick 
Robertson,  we  shall  see,  bore  to  the  last  the  impress 
of  the  suffering  through  which  he  then  passed.  It 
was  in  the  same  years  that  John  Sterling's  faith 
disappeared ;  and  Matthew  Arnold's  first  poems, 
with  all  their  divine  despair,  although  not  pub- 
lished till  a  later  date  (1853),  were  born  of  the 
same  time  of  spiritual  darkness,  when  the  sun  of 
faith  went  down  on  so  many  hearts. 

The  recent  life  of  George  Eliot  has  served  to 
bring  into  prominence  some  of  the  special  disinte- 
grating influences  of  this  time.  George  Eliot  herself 
belongs  upon  the  whole  to  the  later  or  *  Scientific ' 
era,  which  marks  itself  off  from  the  period  now  under 
review.  It  was  not  till  after  1855,  and  her  conjunc- 
tion with  such  fellow-workers  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
and  Mr.  Lewes,  that  her  unbelief  assumed  a  definite 
form.  But  she  and  her  friends  the  Hennells  and 
Brays  bear  ample  testimony  to  the  disintegration  of 
belief  in  the  preceding  decade.  An  ardent  Evan- 
gelical in  1840,  she  had  left  off  her  old  faith  in  the 
following  year,  influenced  in  the  main  by  a  book  of 
Charles  Hennell's  entitled  An  Inquiry  cojiceniing  the 
Origin  of  Christianity.  There  is  no  evidence  of  her 
having  been  attracted  by  the  Oxford  Theology ;  but 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Chai'lcs  Kingsley.    257 

she  had  read  with  interest,  and  some  disturbance  of 
thought,  Isaac  Taylor's  animadversions  on  that 
Theology  in  Ancient  Clirisiianity  (August  1840). 
Probably  the  contrast  between  the  faith  in  which 
she  had  been  brought  up  and  the  opinions  of  many 
of  the  Fathers  was  a  somewhat  harsh  awakening  to 
her,  and  while  in  this  state  of  mind  the  views  pre- 
sented by  the  Brays  and  the  line  of  inquiry  started 
by  Mr.  Hennell  laid  hold  of  her,  and  led  her  in  the 
purely  sceptical  direction  which  she  followed  for  the 
next  ten  years. 

Miss  Evans  herself,  w^hatever  we  may  think  of 
her  conclusions,  was  strong  as  a  sceptic,  as  in 
all  other  respects.  There  is  no  weakness  in  any 
of  her  work.  Her  translation  of  Strauss,  begun  in 
1843  and  published  in  1846,  is  a  masterpiece  of  its 
kind,  and  no  less  her  subsequent  translation  of 
Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Christianity.  But  the  influ- 
ences that  surrounded  her  in  those  years  were  not  of 
a  high  order.  The  Brays  and  Hennells  were  people 
of  more  than  usual  intellectuality ;  but  the  Philosophy 
of  Necessity  by  Charles  Bray  and  Charles  Hennell's 
Inquiry  are  neither  of  them  very  profound  or  inter- 
esting books.  Mr.  Bray  reminds  us,  as  a  writer,  of 
George  Combe,  and  is  a  less  original  thinker  of 
the  same  school.  He  was,  as  his  recent  biography 
shows,  full  of  that  singular  self-elation  characteristic 
of  second-class  intellectual  men  when  they  hit,  as 
they  suppose,  upon  new  veins  of  thought.  Hennell's 
volume  opened  a  line  of  inquiry  in  this  country  akin 
to  that  of  Strauss  and  the  Tiibingen  School  in  Ger- 
many. It  was  translated  into  German  under  Strauss's 
own    direction,   and    is    not   without   a   certain    bald 

R 


258      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

acuteness ;  but  its  historical  criticism,  notwithstand- 
ing the  commendation  of  George  Eliot,  is  shallow  and 
meagre, — one  of  its  main  features  being  the  derivative 
connection  of  Christianity  with  the  Essenes — a  sup- 
position now  proved  quite  baseless,^  as  indeed,  to  any 
one  who  understood  either  Essenism  or  Christianity, 
it  was  always  a  bad  guess. 

Of  all  the  sceptical  group  which  surrounded  George 
Eliot  in  those  years  there  is  not  one  save  herself  who 
will  be  remembered  for  anything  that  they  did.  The 
world  had  indeed  forgotten  them  till  brought  to  life 
again  in  her  letters.  Even  Mackay's  Progress  of  the 
Intellect,  a  work  which  she  much  admired,  and 
reviewed  for  the  'Westminster'  in  1859,  is  not  only 
a  dull  book,  but  to  a  large  extent  on  false  lines.  It 
seems  strange  that  lesser  illuminati  of  this  kind, 
known  to  the  world  at  the  time  mainly  in  con- 
nection with  Mr.  Chapman  the  publisher  of  the 
*  Westminster,'  and  the  series  of  anti-Christian 
volumes  which  issued  from  his  press,  should  have 
influenced  so  much  as  they  did  a  mind  like  George 
Eliot's.  Sara  Hennell,^  notwithstanding  her  chaotic 
style,  is  the  only  one  besides  George  Eliot  herself 
with  any  real  genius.  There  is  a  sense  of  power  in 
her,  inarticulate  as  it  often  is,  which  explains  her 
long  mental  association  with  the  translator  of  Strauss 
and  the  author  of  Roniola.  In  none  of  them,  how- 
ever— not  even  in  George  Eliot — can  we  trace  any 
large  knowledge  of  the  Christianity  they  so  readily 

'  See  Bishop  Lightfoot's  elaborate  discussion  of  the  subject, —  T7u 
Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Colossiaiis,  p.  114  et  seq. 

'  Particularly  in  Sara  Hennell's  Thoiights  in  Aid  of  Faith  (l86o) 
there  are  some  striking  and  interesting  trains  of  reflection. 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingslcy.    259 

abandoned,  or  any  genuine  historic  insight  into  the 
problem  of  its  origin.  The  originahty  of  Christ's 
character,  in  absolute  distinction  from  all  else  in 
the  Jewish  thought  or  imagination  of  the  time,  is 
unappreciated.  The  spiritual  side  of  Christianity  in 
its  sense  of  Sin  and  revelation  of  Divine  Pity  and 
forgiveness  is  unfelt.  The  transcendency  of  the 
Divine  Life  depicted  in  the  Gospels  finds  no  echo  in 
their  hearts.  Religion  even  to  George  Eliot  is  not 
an  inner  power  of  Divine  mystery  awakening  the 
conscience.  It  is  at  best  an  intellectual  exercise,  or 
a  scenic  picture,  or  a  beautiful  memory.  Her  early 
Evangelicalism  peeled  off  her  like  an  outer  garment, 
leaving  behind  only  a  rich  vein  of  dramatic  experi- 
ence which  she  afterwards  worked  into  her  novels. 
There  is  no  evidence  of  her  great  change  having 
produced  in  her  any  spiritual  anxiety.  There  is 
nothing  indeed  in  autobiography  more  wonderful 
than  the  facility  with  which  this  remarkable  woman 
parted  first  with  her  faith  and  then  with  the  moral 
sanctions  which  do  so  much  to  consecrate  life,  while 
yet  constantly  idealising  life  in  her  letters,  and  taking 
such  a  large  grasp  of  many  of  its  moral  realities. 
Her  scepticism  and  then  her  eclectic  Humanitarianism 
have  a  certain  benignancy  and  elevation  unlike  vulgar 
infidelity  of  any  kind.  There  are  gleams  of  a  higher 
life  everywhere  in  her  thought.  There  is  much  self- 
distrust,  but  no  self-abasement.  There  is  a  strange 
externality, — as  if  the  Divine  had  never  come  near 
to  her  save  by  outward  form  or  picture, — never 
pierced  to  any  dividing  asunder  of  soul  and  spirit. 
Amidst  all  her  sadness — and  her  life  upon  the  whole 
is  a  very  sad  one — there  are  no  depths  of  spiritual 


2  6o      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

dread  (of  which  dramatically — as  in  Roinola — she 
had  yet  a  vivid  conception),  or  even  of  spiritual 
tenderness.  We  do  not  look  to  minds  of  this  stamp 
— into  which  the  arrows  of  conscience  make  only 
slight  wounds — for  a  true  estimate  of  Christianity 
either  in  its  Divine  character  or  origin. 

But  amongst  all  the  scepticism  of  this  time,  and 
in  direct  connection  with  it,  there  arose  a  new  and 
powerful  religious  influence.  This  has  received  the 
name  of  the  '  Broad  Church  '  movement,  and,  for  the 
sake  of  convenience,  we  shall  use  the  expression.  It 
is  necessary,  however,  to  say  that  the  name  is  not 
only  apt  to  mislead,  but  was  entirely  disowned  by  the 
chief  theologian  to  whom,  with  others,  popular  usage 
has  applied  it.  As  late  as  i860  Mr.  Maurice  says 
that  he  does  not  know  what  '  Broad  Church  '  means, 
but  that  if  it  means  anything  it  must  apply  to  fol- 
lowers of  the  Whately  school, — of  which  he  was 
certainly  not  one.  He  was,  beyond  all  doubt,  right 
in  this.  Mr.  Maurice's  great  deficiency  as  a  theo- 
logian, as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  point  out,  is  just 
his  deficiency  in  certain  critical  qualities  that  be- 
longed to  Whately  and  others,  and  gave  an  historic 
breadth  to  many  of  their  conclusions.  But  the  name 
'  Broad  Church '  has  also  come  to  denote  a  species 
of  universalism — or  breadth  of  doctrinal  sentiment — 
which  was  not  only  not  at  variance  with  Mr.  Maurice's 
standpoint,  but  may  be  held  characteristic  of  the 
men  to  whom  it  is  commonly  applied. 

The  name  '  Broad  Church '  is  said  to  have  been 
first  used  by  Dean  Stanley  in  an  article  in  the  Edin- 
biirgli   Reviciu   in  July  1850  on  the  Gorham  contro- 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kin<^sley.    261 

versy.  His  words  were  to  the  effect  that  the  Church 
of  England  was  *  by  the  very  condition  of  its  being 
neither  High  nor  Low,  but  Broad.'  In  the  original 
use  of  the  word,  therefore,  there  was  no  intention  of 
characterising  any  party.  The  meaning  rather  was 
that  the  Church  of  England  was  of  no  party,  and 
embraced  by  its  constitution  and  history  all  the  dif- 
ferent sides  of  spiritual  truth.  In  this  sense  the  name 
would  not  have  been  repudiated,  but  would  have  been 
willingly  accepted  by  Mr.  Maurice.'  His  whole  teach- 
ing was  a  protest  against  party  spirit  or  sectarianism 
of  eveiy  kind.  A  few  years  after  Dean  Stanley's 
article,  however,  there  appeared  in  the  same  review 
a  striking  paper  by  Mr.  Conybcare  on  '  Church 
Parties,'  and  here  the  name  was  distinctly  applied  in 
a  party  sense  as  denoting  a  succession  of  Liberal  no 
less  than  Anglo-Catholic  and  Evangelical  teachers, 
which  have  always  pre\^ailed  within  the  English 
Church.  This  is  the  historic  and  best  sense  of  the 
word,  if  it  is  to  be  used  in  a  party  sense  at  all.  It 
will  be  apparent,  as  we  proceed,  how  far  Maurice  and 
Kingsley  are  rightly  identified  with  the  great  succes- 
sion of  liberal  thinkers  in  the  Church  of  England. 

Maurice's  early  associations  identify  him  with  the 
broadest  principles  of  the  Church  of  England.  No 
less  than  his  friend  Sterling  he  was  an  admiring 
student  of  Coleridge,  and  deeply  indebted  to  his 
writings.     Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  welcomed  them  both 

'  This  is  plain  from  his  own  language  in  speaking  of  the  English 
Church  being  broad  enough  to  comprehend  persons  so  unlike  as  Whately 
and  Julius  Hare,  meaning  thereby,  as  he  is  careful  to  explain,  that 
'she  can  claim  their  talents  and  different  qualities  of  mind  for  her 
service.' 


262       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

as  Coleridgians  to  the  debates  in  which  he  delighted 
in  1826.  In  those  debates  Maurice  himself  tells  us  that 
*  he  defended  Coleridge's  metaphysics  '  against  the  utili- 
tarians. He  elsewhere  says  that  Coleridge  ^  had  done 
much  to  preserve  him  from  infidelity.  In  dedicating 
the  second  edition  of  his  first  work,  TJic  Kingdom  of 
Christ,  to  Mr.  Derwent  Coleridge,  he  speaks  at  length 
of  his  indebtedness  to  his  father,  while  at  the  same 
time  saying  that  he  had  never  enjoyed  the  privilege 
of  personal  intercourse  with  him,  and  offering  certain 
criticisms  on  his  writings.  To  the  Aids  to  Reflection 
especially  he  expresses  '  deep  and  solemn  obligations.' 
Whatever  other  influences,  therefore,  affected  Maurice, 
he  struck  his  mental  roots  deeply  in  Coleridge.  Not 
only  so ;  but  in  contrast  to  his  friend  John  Sterling, 
he  never  abandoned  the  impulse  thus  communicated 
to  him.  He  remained  Coleridgian  in  the  basis  of 
his  thought.  It  was  the  Coleridgian  movement, 
under  whatever  modifications,  that  he  and  Kingsley 
really  carried  forward.  The  life  of  Coleridge's 
thought  survived  the  ecclesiastical  turmoil  of  the 
fourth  decade  of  the  century,  and  the  scepticism 
that  followed,  till  it  emerged  strong  again  in  their 
hands.  It  became  a  new  birth  of  religion  in  many 
of  the  stronger  minds  of  the  age  when  Anglican- 
ism was  discredited  and  for  a  time  in  arrest,  and 
Evangelical  Christianity  had  sunk  into  such  teaching 
as  that  of  Dr.  Cumming  and  the  slanderous  ortho- 
doxy of  the  Record.  It  was  the  virtue  of  what  has 
been  called  '  Broad  Churchism '  that  it  attracted 
such  minds.  It  came  as  a  religious  power  to 
them,  when  the  power  of  religion   was  at   ebb-tide 

^  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  177. 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    263 

ill  other  directions.  Maurice  and  Kingsley  and 
Frederick  Robertson  became  the  religious  teachers 
of  a  generation  in  danger  of  forgetting  religion  alto- 
gether. They  were  strong  while  others  were  com- 
paratively weak.  Tennyson  himself,  in  the  whole 
spirit  of  his  poetiy,  is  the  sufficient  evidence  of  this 
powerful  wave  of  religious  tendency,  and  its  ascend- 
ency over  the  higher  minds  of  the  time.  'Strong 
Son  of  God,  Immortal  Love,'  might  be  taken  as 
the  keynote  of  the  movement,  and  the  closing  verse 
of  '  In  Memoriam '  as  a  summary  of  its  thought — 

'  That  God  which  ever  hves  and  loves, 
One  God,  one  law,  one  element. 
And  one  far-off  Divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves.'  ^ 

While  Coleridge  formed  the  basis  of  Maurice's 
thought,  there  were  other  and  powerful  influences  of 
a  peculiar  kind,  that  mingled  in  his  religious  culture. 
Few  men  have  had  a  stranger  religious  up-bringing. 
His  father  was  a  Unitarian  minister  of  the  tolerant 
unaggressive  type,  which  preceded  Priestley  and  Bel- 
sham,  a  man  of  varied  culture,  and  self-sacrificing 
if  not  zealous  life.  Calmly  restful  in  his  own  con- 
victions, he  was  content  to  preach  the  great  moralities 
and  duties  of  religion,  as  was  customary  in  his 
time.  His  enthusiasm  went  out,  like  that  of  so 
many  others  of  his  class,  into  politics  rather  than 
religion.     He  would  have  been  glad  to  lead  a  peace- 

1  See  other  verses  still  more  significant  of  the  '  Broad  Church  '  point 
of  view,  LIV.,  LV.,  LVI.,  and  the  well-known  lines — 

'  Our  little  systems  have  their  day  ; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be : 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 

And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they.' 


264       Move7nents  of  Religious  Thought. 

ful,  busy,  religious  life  after  his  own  fashion,  farm- 
ing, preaching,  and  keeping  a  school  for  boys.  He 
was  devoted  to  the  good  of  his  children,  and  worked 
hard  for  them,  but  all  the  while  a  singular  trial 
was  preparing  for  him  in  the  bosom  of  his  own 
family.  His  elder  daughters  (there  were  three 
older  than  Frederick),  and  then  his  wife,  aban- 
doned his  Unitarian  creed,  and  withdrew  from  his 
ministry.  They  wrote  to  him  that  they  could  no 
longer  'attend  a  Unitarian  place  of  worship,'  or  even 
'take  the  Communion  with  him.'  The  picture,  as 
presented  by  Colonel  Maurice,  is  a  very  painful  one, 
on  which  we  would  rather  not  comment.  If  there 
was  any  type  of  religious  thought  more  obnoxious 
than  another  to  the  Unitarian  father  and  minister,  it 
was  Calvinism,  yet  to  Calvinism  they  all  betook 
themselves,  though  by  different  roads.  Each  daughter 
'took  up  a  position  peculiar  to  herself  The  eldest 
joined  the  Church  of  England ;  the  second  (Anne) 
became  a  Baptist  under  Mr.  Foster,  the  famous 
Essayist;  and  Mary,  the  third,  w^as  not  'exactly 
in  sympathy  with  either  of  the  others.'  After  various 
experiences,  however,  she  also  joined  the  Church  of 
England,  as  all  the  younger  members  of  the  family 
seem  to  have  done.  This  strongly  marked  religious 
individualism — an  inheritance  from  the  mother — ex- 
plains a  good  deal  in  Mr.  Maurice.  No  man  could  be 
in  a  sense  less  self-asserting  than  he  was.  His  shy 
humility  was  from  early  years  a  marked  feature  of  his 
character.  But  along  with  an  almost  morbid  self- 
depreciation  there  was  also  from  the  first — certainly 
from  the  time  that  he  turned  his  thoughts  to  the 
Church — an    intense    spirit  of    religious    confidence. 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  King  si cy.    265 

Generalising  from  his  own  family  experiences,  he 
was  led  to  certain  conclusions  which  he  held  as 
absolute  .truths.  These  conclusions  were  entirely  un- 
like those  to  which  his  sisters  and  mother  had  come. 
But  they  were  held  with  the  same  tenacity  and  dis- 
regard of  consequences.  If  more  enlightened,  they 
were  not  the  less  downright.  When  his  mother 
assured  her  astonished  husband  that'  Calvinism  zvas 
true'  she  said  what  her  son  would  never  have  said — 
but  the  spirit  of  the  saying  may  be  traced  in  many  of 
his  utterances. 

More  than  this,  the  singular  bigotry  of  his  sisters 
— we  cannot  give  it  any  lesser  name — reappears  in  at 
least  one  act  of  his  life — his  rebaptism  at  the  age 
of  twenty-six,  when  he  at  length  finally  joined  the 
Church  of  England,  and  began  to  prepare  for 
her  ministry.  This  is  a  truly  painful  incident  in 
Mr.  Maurice's  career — of  itself  enough  to  show  how 
far  he  was  from  theologians  of  the  Whately  and 
historical  Latitudinarian  school.  What  would  any  of 
them,  Bishop  Butler,  or  Tenison,  or  even  Tait  in 
our  own  time,  have  thought  of  such  an  act  ?  If  the 
baptismal  rite  of  his  father — always,  as  we  are  told, 
performed  'in  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son, 
and  of  the  Holy  Ghost ' — was  not  enough,  what  made 
it  not  enough  ?  His  father's  imperfect  faith.  But 
is  the  efficacy  of  a  rite  to  be  judged  by  the  precise 
faith  of  the  celebrant  ?  Or  was  the  rite  only  effica- 
cious in  the  Church  of  England?  But  what  was  this 
but  to  fall  into  the  worst  error  he  attributed  to  Dr. 
Pusey  and  the  Tractarians  ?  '  I  think  I  was  directed 
to  do  it  by  the  Holy  Spirit,'  is  all  he  says  in  defence 
of  the  act  in  a  letter  to  one  of  his  sisters.     But  what 


266       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

is  this  but  an  assertion  of  his  own  private  judgment 
in  a  form  which  admits  of  no  answer  ? 

In    addition    to    the    influence   of  Coleridge    and 

o 

of  his  own  peculiar  family  experiences,  there  was  a 
third  and  very  important  factor  in  the  formation  of 
Maurice's  theology.  If  Coleridge  laid  the  foundation, 
and  the  strong  religious  individualism  which  he 
inherited  gave  direction  to  his  thought,  it  ultimately 
took  much  of  its  form  from  Mr.  Erskine's  writings 
and  the  theology  in  Scotland  with  which  Mr. 
Erskine  was  identified.  It  is  difficult  to  fix  the  pre- 
cise period  when  Mr.  Erskine's  mode  of  thinking 
began  to  touch  Mr.  Maurice  ;  but  very  early  in  his 
career,  before  he  had  turned  his  attention  to  theology 
as  a  study,  it  was  brought  under  his  notice  in  connec- 
tion with  his  mother's  religious  difficulties  and  his  own 
painful  feelings  arising  therefrom.  For  a  time,  and 
while  still  a  youth,  these  difficulties  so  clouded  his 
own  mind,  that  he  wrote  to  a  lady  in  an  extremely 
gloomy  tone  as  to  his  own  spiritual  condition  and 
prospects.^  The  lady  was  a  friend  of  Mr.  Erskine, 
whose  first  book  had  then  appeared,  and  she  replied 
questioning  his  authority  for  the  dark  suggestion 
he  had  made  of  his  being  destined  to  misery,  here 
and  hereafter.  Her  argument  was  exactly  in  the 
spirit  of  Mr.  Erskine,  and  obviously  impressed  him. 
Later,  when  at  Oxford  in  1830,  he  formed  the 
acquaintance  of  Mr.  Bruce,  afterwards  Lord  Elgin, 
Governor-General  of  India,  and  through  him  became 
directly  acquainted  with  Mr.  Erskine's  books,  notably 
at  the  time  with  the  volume  entitled  TJie  Brazen 
Serpent,  which  produced  a  very  important  effect  upon 
» Vol.  i.  p.  43. 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    267 

his  mind.  Long  afterwards,  in  an  autobiographical 
letter  written  for  his  son/  he  says  of  the  impres- 
sions he  then  received,  '  I  was  led  to  ask  myself 
what  a  Gospel  to  mankind  must  be ;  whether  it  must 
not  have  some  other  ground  than  the  fall  of  Adam, 
and  the  sinful  nature  of  man.  I  was  helped  much 
in  finding  an  answer  to  the  question  by  Mr.  Erskine's 
books — I  did  not  then  know  him  personally — and  by 
the  sermons  of  Mr.  Campbell.  The  English  Church 
I  thought  was  the  witness  for  that  universal  redemp- 
tion which  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  had  declared  to 
be  incompatible  with  their  Confessions.'  ^ 

From  this  time  onwards  he  was  deeply  pondering 
the  prospect  before  him  of  becoming  a  minister  in 
the  Church  of  England,  which  he  became  three  years 
later.^  All  the  influences  which  had  mingled  in  his 
life  continued  to  work  powerfully,  and  none  more  so 
than  the  larger  view  of  the  Gospel,  which  was  opened 
to  him  as  he  believed  in  Mr.  Erskine's  writings.  In 
letters  to  his  father  and  mother,  he  explains  at 
length  '  the  firmly  fixing  basis  '  of  his  thoughts  ;  and 
it  may  truly  be  said,  as  is  virtually  said  by  his  son, 
that  he  nev^er  swerved  from  this  basis.  There  are 
few,  even  of  his  after  controversies,  the  germs  of 
which  cannot  be  found  in  these  letters.  He  was 
already  nearly  thirty  years  of  age,  and  multiplied  as 
were  his  subsequent  activities,  the  position  in  which 
he  now  stood  when  he  began  his  ministry,  was  the 
position  in  which  he  always  stood.  Let  us  endeavour 
then,  if  we  can,  to  state  this  position  clearly.  Of  all 
writers  there  is  none  to  whose  fundamental  principle 
it  is  more  necessary  to  get  an  initial  clue  than  to  Mr, 

'  In  1878.  »  Vol.  i.  p.  183.  3  In  Januar)'  1834. 


268       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Maurice's.  Even  with  such  a  clue  his  marvellous 
subtlety  is  often  evasive ;  without  it,  it  is  hopeless  to 
read  a  coherent  meaning  into  his  several  writings 
and  controversies. 

There  are  at  least  two  fundamental  principles 
that  lie  at  the  basis  of  all  his  thought.  The  first 
and  most  important  of  these,  as  well  as  the  most 
pervading,  is  nowhere  more  clearly  expressed  than 
in  a  letter  to  his  mother  at  this  time  (December 
1833).  His  mother,  as  we  have  already  seen,  had 
embraced  with  his  elder  sisters  an  extreme  type 
of  Calvinism.  She  had  done  so,  however,  like 
Cowper,  without  deriving  any  comfort  from  her 
supralapsarian  doctrine.  Believing  in  Election  as 
absolutely  fixed,  she  could  not  yet  realise  that  she 
was  one  of  the  Elect.  A  more  painful  state  of  mind 
can  hardly  be  imagined.  His  mother's  spiritual 
distress  was  a  constant  pain  to  the  son,  while  it 
increased  his  love  and  reverence  for  her.  It  was 
especially  painful  in  the  light  of  the  larger  views  that 
he  believed  had  come  to  himself  Nay,  how  far  may 
those  larger  views  not  have  been  welcome  to  him  as 
a  reaction  from  the  narrow  and  dreadful  doctrine 
which  had  fascinated  the  minds  of  both  his  mother 
and  sisters,  and  even  for  a  time  thrown  a  shadow  over 
himself?  In  any  case  it  is  against  the  background  of 
such  a  doctrine  that  he  draws  out  the  great  antithetic 
principle  on  which  all  his  own  theology  lay — the 
principle  it  may  be  called  of  '  universal  redemption.' 
We  use  this  expression  because  it  is  used  by  him- 
self But  like  many  general  expressions  it  is 
misleading  and  indefinite.  It  is  necessary  to  clear 
it  up  therefore  in  his  own  language,  if  not  exactly 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kiiigsley.    269 

his  own  order  of  expression.  '  Now,  my  dearest 
mother,'  he  says,  '  you  wish  or  long  to  beheve  your- 
self in  Christ,  but  you  are  afraid  to  do  so,  because 
you  think  there  is  some  experience  that  you  are 
in  him  necessary  to  warrant  that  belief  Now  if 
any  man,  or  an  angel  from  heaven,  preach  this 
doctrine  to  you,  let  him  be  accursed.  You  have  this 
warrant  for  believing  yourself  in  Christ,  that  you 
cannot  do  one  loving  act,  you  cannot  obey  one  of 
God's  commandments,  you  cannot  pray,  you  cannot 
hope,  you  cannot  love  if  you  are  not  in  him.  .  .  . 
What  then  do  I  assert  ?  Is  there  no  difference 
between  the  believer  and  the  unbeliever  ?  Yes,  the 
greatest  difference.  But  the  difference  is  not  about 
the  fact,  but  precisely  in  the  belief  of  the  fact.  God 
tells  us  "  In  Him,  that  is  in  Christ,  I  have  created  all 
things,  whether  they  be  in  heaven  or  on  earth. 
Christ  is  the  head  of  every  man."  Some  men  believe 
this,  some  men  disbelieve  it.  Those  men  who  disbe- 
lieve it  walk  after  the  flesh.  They  do  not  believe 
that  they  are  joined  to  an  Almighty  Lord  of  Life — 
One  who  is  mightier  than  the  world,  the  flesh,  and 
the  devil — One  who  is  nearer  to  them  than  their  own 
flesh.  .  .  .  But  though  tens  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  men  so  live,  we  are  forbidden  by  Christian  truth 
and  the  Catholic  Church  to  call  this  the  real  state  of 
any  man.  The  truth  is  that  every  man  is  in  Christ ; 
the  condemnation  of  every  man  is  that  he  will  not 
own  the  truth — he  will  not  act  as  if  it  were  tnce  that 
except  he  were  joined  to  Christ  he  could  not  think, 
breathe,  live  a  single  hour.'  ^ 

Here,  in  these  emphatic  words   to   his   mother,  we 
^  Vol.  i.  pp.  155-6. 


270       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

get  to  the  heart  of  Mr.  Maurice's  theology.  It  is  the 
very  antithesis  of  that  of  his  mother.  Men  generally, 
she  believed,  were  not  related  to  Christ.  Man,  as 
man  merely,  was  '  under  the  wrath  and  curse  of  God.' 
With  him,  on  the  contrary,  man  is  divinely  created 
in  Christ  from  the  first.  Man,  as  man,  is  the  child 
of  God.^  He  does  not  need  '  to  become  a  child  of 
God ; '  he  needs  only  to  recognise  the  fact  that  he 
already  is  such. 

Maurice's  quarrel  with  the  popular  theology 
through  all  his  life  was  mainly  on  this  fundamental 
ground.  It  taught,  he  supposed,  whether  in  the  form 
of  High  Church  Anglicanism  or  Calvinism,  that  man 
had  '  to  become  a  child  of  God.'  Instead  of  begin- 
ning with  the  divine  constitution  of  man  in  Christ, 
it  began  with  the  fallen  evil  condition  of  man  out  of 
which  Christ  came  to  redeem  his  people,  and  so  went 
wrong  radically  from  the  first.  In  one  case  man  was 
represented  as  becoming  a  child  of  God  by  baptism, 
in  the  other  by  conscious  conversion.  The  theology 
of  the  Bible  and  of  the  Catholic  creeds  was  in  his 
view  against  these  extremes  alike.  Both  were 
untrue ;  but  popular  Protestantism  still  more  so  than 
Anglicanism.  He  himself  was  '  never  a  Calvinist,'  as 
his  son  truly  says,  although  its  shadow  passed  over 
him.  He  had  certain  affinities  with  it,  especially  with 
the  manner  in  which — in  contrast,  as  he  supposed, 
with  Arminianism — it  sets  forth  God  and  not  man^ 
in  the  forefront  of  sah-ation.  He  also  appreciated 
its  strong  grasp  of  moral  realities.  But  all  that 
was  cardinal  in  his  own  theology  was  opposed 
to    it.     On   the    other    hand,   it    seemed   for   a   time 

^  See  Erskines  Letters,  vol.  ii.  p.  322.  '■'  Ibid.  p.  93. 


F.  D.  Maurice  ami  Charles  Kingsley.    271 

as  if  he  might  have  been  caught  in  the  High 
Church  enthusiasm  which  prevailed  just  after  he 
began  his  ministry.  The  High  Church  party  had 
certain  hopes  of  him  at  first,  so  much  so  that  they  did 
what  they  could  in  the  beginning  of  1837  to  promote 
his  election  to  the  Chair  of  Political  Enonomy  at 
Oxford.  They  recognised  his  spiritual  genius,  and 
they  were  grateful  for  the  help  he  had  given  them 
by  his  pamphlet  Subscription  no  Bondage.  But  Dr. 
Pusey's  tract  on  Baptism  drove  him  from  their  side. 
He  recurs  over  and  over  again  to  the  pain  this  tract 
gave  him.  Baptism  was,  as  may  be  imagined,  a 
sensitive  point  with  Maurice.  Much  of  his  argument 
in  his  first  book,  TJie  Kingdom  of  Christ,  turns  upon 
its  true  meaning.  He  attached  infinite  importance 
to  it  as  '  the  sign  of  admission  into  a  spiritual  and 
universal  kingdom  grounded  upon  our  Lord's  incarna- 
tion '  (of  which  he  considered  the  Church  of  England 
the  true  representative).  But  the  doctrine  of  an  opus 
opcratum  was  peculiarly  repulsive  to  him.  It  implied 
the  subversion  of  his  fundamental  principle  still  more 
than  the  necessity  of  conscious  conversion.  For  it 
presupposed  the  communication  of  a  new  nature 
instead  of  the  recognition  of  an  original  and  real 
relation.  In  his  own  words  it  converted  a  sacrament 
into  an  event.'  To  him  this  was  the  destruction  of 
the  spiritual  life  and  of  the  idea  of  the  Church  as  a 
communion  of  self-renunciation  and  holy  discipline. 

The  second  great  principle  which  may  be  said  to 
lie  at  the  foundation  of  Maurice's  thought  was  his 
desire  for  unity .^     He  was  '  haunted  all  his   life,'  he 

'  Kingdom  of  Christ,  vol.  i.  p.  428. 
*  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  41 ;  vol.  ii.  p.  632. 


272       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

says,  '  by  this  desire.'  He  had  seen  the  evils  of  dis- 
union in  his  father's  family.  He  thought  he  could 
also  trace  there  the  true  secret  of  unity.  In  a  letter 
as  early  as  1834:^  'I  would  wish  to  live  and  die 
for  the  assertion  of  this  truth ;  that  the  universal 
Church  is  just  as  much  a  reality  as  any  particular 
nation  is ;  that  the  Church  is  the  witness  for  the 
true  constitution  of  man  as  man,  a  child  of  God, 
an  heir  of  heaven,  and  taking  up  his  pardon  by 
baptism ;  that  the  world  is  a  miserable  accursed 
rebellious  order  which  denies  this  foundation,  which 
will  create  a  foundation  of  self-will,  choice,  taste, 
opinion ;  that  in  the  world  there  can  be  no  com- 
munion ;  that  in  the  Church  there  can  be  universal 
communion — communion  in  one  body  by  one  spirit. 
For  this  our  Church  of  England  is  now,  as  I  think, 
the  only  firm  consistent  witness.'  So  thought  also  the 
Newmanites.  With  them  too — with  Newman  him- 
self in  particular — the  note  of  unity  was  ultimately 
the  governing  note  in  the  idea  of  the  Church.  But 
the  ideas  of  unity  were  entirely  different  in  the 
two  cases.  Newman  and  his  followers  sought  unity 
in  a  great  external  organism,  uniform  in  doctrine, 
government,  and  worship.  All  outside  of  this 
organism  was  heretical  and  schismatic,  and  so,  as 
Maurice  thought,  in  the  very  effort  to  reach  unity, 
they  restricted  and  endangered  it.  They  imperilled 
the  very  thing  they  so  much  prized.  The  true  idea, 
according  to  him,  was  to  be  found  not  in  any  nega- 
tions or  hard  lines  of  demarcation  indicating  the 
true  Church,  but  in  the  conciliation  of  what  was 
positive   in  all  Christians,  and  the  rejection  of  their 

1  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  166. 


p.  D.  MaiuHce  and  Ckaj^les  Kiiigsley.   273 

negations.  This  was  how  his  peculiar  family  ex- 
perience worked.  Divided  as  his  sisters  were,  they 
were  in  the  substance  of  their  faith  united.  It  was 
their  negations  alone  that  divided  them.  In  their 
affirmations  they  were  at  one.  And  so,  out  of  the 
training  of  his  home,  as  he  himself  admits,'  there 
came  the  very  depth  of  his  belief  in  that  which 
he  declared  to  be  '  the  centre  of  all  his  belief  He 
sought  everywhere  in  the  positive  side  of  thought  a 
source  of  unity  very  much  on  the  old  principle 
attributed  to  Leibnitz,  and  laid  down  by  J.  S.  Mill  in 
his  paper  on  Coleridge,  '  that  thinking  people  were  for 
the  most  part  right  in  what  they  affirmed,  wrong  in 
what  they  denied.'  In  similar  language  Maurice  says 
of  the  Anglo-Catholics,  *  I  sometimes  feel  a  longing 
desire  to  set  them  right  when  I  think  they  are  mis- 
apprehending or  frightening  away  sincere  dissenters  ; 
to  say  "  you  need  not  weaken  one  of  your  assertions, 
you  may  make  them  stronger,  and  yet  by  just  this  or 
that  little  alteration  give  them  a  (really)  Catholic 
instead  of  an  exclusive  form." '  Again  his  pupil, 
Mr.  Strachey,  makes  the  principle  very  clear,  writing 
of  Maurice's  views  on  Baptism.^  '  His  object,'  he 
says,  '(and  this  is  his  method  on  all  subjects),  is 
to  show  that  in  each  of  the  party  views  there  is  a 
great  truth  asserted,  that  he  agrees  wdth  each  party 
in  the  assertion,  and  maintains  that  it  cannot  de- 
fend them  too  strongly ;  but  he  says  each  is  wrong 
when  it  becomes  the  denier  of  the  truth  of  the 
others,  and  when  it  assumes  its  portion  of  the  truth 
to  be  the  whole.' 

This  principle,  that  true  Catholicity  lay  in  leaving 

*  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  41.  "^  lb.  p.  203. 

S 


2  74      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

aside  negations  and  bringing  together  the  positive 
aspects  of  truth,  entered  deeply  into  Maurice's  whole 
turn  of  thinking.  Applied  to  religion  in  general, 
and  not  merely  to  different  parties  within  the 
Christian  Church,  it  is  the  germ  of  the  higher  thought 
of  one  of  his  best  books.  The  Religions  of  the  World, 
to  which  many  young  thinkers  were  indebted  nearly 
forty  years  ago  (1847),  before  so  much  was  known  as 
now  upon  the  subject.  It  runs  through  all  his  most 
elaborate  work,  Moral  mid  Metaphysical  Philosophy. 
It  was  always  springing  up  as  a  genial  and  fertile 
seed  in  his  varied  life  of  thought  and  controversy.  It 
has  a  latitudinarian  side,  and  to  many  minds  will  seem 
inseparable  from  the  ordinary  idea  which  would 
make  room  within  the  Church  for  a  variety  of  opinions. 
But  this  was  not  Maurice's  interpretation  of  his  own 
principle.  He  had  no  patience  with  the  inclusion  of 
'  all  kind  of  opinions.'  This  is  of  the  nature  of  pro- 
fane liberalism.  Unity  must  come  from  the  centre — 
Christ.  On  this  positive  ground  all  may  unite,  but 
there  can  be  no  union  otherwise.  Christ,  as  being  the 
head  of  every  man,  is  the  centre  of  universal  fellow- 
ship, and  there  is  no  other  centre.  And  so  the  two 
main  principles  with  which  he  worked  run  into  one 
another.  They  are  not  independent  but  inter- 
dependent principles.  He  expresses  this  plainly  in 
the  following  very  characteristic  passage  : — '  If  the 
person  whom  I  then  meet  fraternises  elsewhere  on 
another  principle,  that  is  nothing  to  me.  But  if  the 
same  person  said  to  me,  "  Let  us  meet  to-morrow  at 
some  meeting  of  the  Bible  Society :  I  am  an  Inde- 
pendent, or  a  Baptist,  or  a  Quaker ;  you,  I  know,  are 
an  Episcopalian  ;  but  let  us  forget  our  differences  and 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    275 

meet  on  the  ground  of  our  common  Christianity," — I 
should  say  instantly,  I  will  do  no  such  thing.  I  con 
sider  that  your  whole  scheme  is  a  flat  contradiction 
and  a  lie.  You  come  forward  with  the  avowal  that 
you  fraternise  on  some  other  ground  than  that  of  our 
union  in  Christ,  and  then  you  ask  me  to  fraternise 
wath  you  on  that  ground.  I  consider  your  sects — one 
and  all  of  them — as  an  outrage  on  the  Christian 
principle,  as  a  denial  of  it.  And  what  is  the  common 
Christianity  which  you  speak  of?  The  mere  caput 
mortuum  of  all  systems.  You  do  not  really  mean  us 
to  unite  in  Christ  as  being  members  of  his  body;  you 
mean  us  to  unite  in  holding  certain  notions  about 
Christ.' ' 

Here  again  we  get  to  the  very  core  of  Mr.  Maurice's 
thought — his  strange  mixture  of  universalism,  and  yet 
dogmatism — of  generousness  and  yet  severity.  He 
could  embrace  all  men  in  his  Christian  charity,  but 
they  must  not  bring  their  opinions  to  him  to  be 
tolerated.  His  own  faith  does  not  rest  on  any  opinion 
or '  notions,'  as  he  maintains,  but  on  certain  divine  facts. 
That  Christ  was  the  essential  ground  o{  all  human  life, 
that  man  is  created  in  him  from  the  first,  and  has 
only  to  recognise  his  creative  birthright ;  that  all  men 
being  thus  equally  in  Christ  are  members  of  his  body, 
united  in  his  fellowship,  if  they  will  only  own  the 
ground  of  their  common  life — these  were  not  opinions 
with  him,  they  were  of  the  nature  of  facts  admitting 
of  no  question.  They  run  through  all  his  theology. 
They  reappear  in  sermons,  essays,  and  treatises. 
They  furnish  the  key  to  most  of  his  work  as  a 
Christian     philanthropist     as    well     as     a    Christian 

1  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  25S-259. 


2/6      Movements  of  Religious  Thought, 

preacher.  His  profound  faith  in  them  moulds  all  his 
thought,  philosophical  as  well  as  religious,  explains 
his  views  about  creeds,  about  the  Church,  about  sects ; 
his  indignation  alike  at  the  Record,  and  at  Mansel's 
Bampton  Lectures. 

There  never  was  a  more  mistaken  idea  of  any  man 
than  that  which  associated  Maurice  with  a  negative 
or  half-believing  theology.  He  was  the  most  posi- 
tive if  not  the  most  definite  of  thinkers.  He  was 
essentially  affirmative,  starting  from  Christ  as  the 
great  affirmation  both  of  thought  and  life.  Man  only 
finds  himself  in  Christ,  only  finds  his  brother  there  ;  the 
true  life  of  the  individual,  of  the  family,  of  the  nation, 
of  the  Church,  all  come  from  the  same  centre  and 
rest  on  it.  The  Catholic  creeds  witness  to  this  Divine 
reality  in  all  its  comprehensive  meaning ;  he  can 
see  nothing  in  them  but  this  glorious  witness.  Their 
very  negations  become  glorified  in  the  light  of  this 
faith.  The  Scriptures  everywhere  speak  with  the 
same  voice.  Scholar  and  thinker  as  he  was,  no  man 
was  ever  less  of  a  purely  historical  critic.  He  saw 
everywhere  a  reflection  of  his  favourite  ideas.  No 
Alexandrian  divine  of  the  second  or  third  century 
— no  Evangelical  or  Anglican  traditionalist  of  later 
times,  ever  dealt  more  arbitrarily  with  the  develop- 
ment of  Divine  Revelation,  or  imposed  his  own  mean- 
ings more  confidently  on  Patriarchs  and  Prophets.  His 
vivid  faith  in  the  Divine — the  strength  of  his  root- 
convictions,  amounting  to  a  species  of  infallibility — 
made  him  see  from  Genesis  to  Revelation  only  the 
same  substance  of  Divine  dogma. 

Maurice's  theology  was  therefore  profoundly  dog- 
matic.     It  was  wide,  generous,  in  a   sense  universal, 


F.  D.  Maurice  mid  Charles  Kingsley.   277 

but  it  took  its  rise  in  positive  principles  of  the  most 
absolute  kind.  He  is  often  accused  of  haziness  and 
uncertainty.  His  idea  of  God  was  supposed  by  Dr, 
Candlish  to  vanish  in  a  mere  mist  of  *  Charity  '  which 
left  no  room  for  a  Moral  Governor  of  the  universe. 
There  is  a  certain  ground  for  this  assertion  when  we 
examine  the  details  of  his  theological  system  ;  but  no 
theological  system  could  rest  more  on  certain  great 
propositions,  which  were,  as  we  have  said,  of  the 
nature  of  facts  rather  than  propositions  to  Maurice 
himself  They  were  realistic  in  the  highest  degree, 
like  the  general  ideas  of  Platonism.  He  supposed 
himself  to  have  a  far  greater  regard  for  facts  than 
Coleridge  ;  ^  but  his  very  facts  were  realised  abstrac- 
tions rather  than  objective  certainties. 

There  was  beyond  doubt  a  certain  analogy  between 
the  school  which  gathered  around  Mr.  Maurice  and 
that  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  is  not  only  that  many  common  ideas 
lay  at  the  root  of  their  thinking,  but  they  had  many 
of  the  same  personal  excellencies  and  defects.  They 
had  the  same  elevation,  the  same  wide  tolerance  and 
charity,  the  same  ideal  enthusiasm,  but  also  some- 
thing of  the  same  esoteric  character,  the  same  con- 
sciousness that  they  were  a  group  by  themselves, 
pursuing  a  common  object.  With  all  his  hatred  of 
sects  Maurice  had  something  in  him  not  indeed 
of  the  spirit  of  the  sectary  (no  man  could  be  freer 
from  all  the  baser  qualities  which  that  name  denotes), 
but  of  the  spirit  of  an  inner  brotherhood.  He  and 
those  who  worked  with  him  were  all  more  or  less 
a    '  peculiar    people '    with    special    sympathies    and 

1  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  203. 


2/8       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

r.pecial  aims  in  common.  This  same  spirit  is  rife  in 
the  Cambridge  Platonists,  and  one  of  the  *  notes  *  of 
the  group.  But  in  a  far  higher  respect  they  had 
also  much  in  common.  The  truly  great  work  of  the 
Cambridge  Platonists  in  the  seventeenth  century  was 
apologetic  and  not  dogmatic.  This  was  also  the 
special  mission  of  Maurice  and  his  school.  They 
advanced  theological  inquiry  by  their  rational  spirit — 
their  openness  to  intellectual  movement  on  all  sides — 
their  fearless  assertion  of  the  rights  of  Theology  in 
the  face  of  Modern  Science,  more  than  in  any  other 
way.  Just  as  Cudworth  and  More  were  the  living 
witnesses  to  the  Divine  reasonableness  of  Christianity 
against  the  fashionable  Empiricism  of  their  day,  so 
Maurice  and  Kingsley,  in  the  midst  of  an  atmo- 
sphere of  low-breathed  Scepticism  on  one  side  and 
of  mere  formal  theology  on  the  other,  were  witnesses 
for  a  Christianity  which  had  nothing  to  fear  from 
the  progress  of  Knowledge.  To  the  unbelief  and 
traditionalism  of  their  time  they  presented  a  lofty 
front  of  Christian  ideality — a  reassertion  of  Divine 
fact — of  man's  essential  Divinity  in  Christ,  as  lying 
at  the  basis  of  all  true  thought. 

This,  as  it  appears  to  us,  is  the  true  point  of  view 
from  which  to  regard  the  early  Broad  Church  move- 
ment. It  was  essentially  a  reconstructive  movement 
of  Christian  ideas  which  were  losing  their  hold  on 
contemporary  minds.  Evangelicalism  for  the  time 
had  lost  its  power.  Anglicanism  was  passing  through 
a  crisis.  The  moment  of  creative  influence  was  gone 
for  both.  As  Kingsley  says  in  one  of  his  letters,^ — 
'  Decent     Anglicanism    and    decent    Evangelicalism 

1  Life^  vol.  i.  p.  143. 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.   279 

were  each  playing  the  part  of  Canute  to  the  tide 
rising  around  them.  Men  were  despairing  both  of 
the  reUgion  and  the  social  life  of  the  country.'  The 
real  struggle  was  no  longer,  as  in  the  preceding 
decade,  'between  Popery  and  Protestantism,  but 
between  Atheism  and  Christ.'  This  may  or  may 
not  be  an  exaggerated  picture,  but  it  was  the  picture 
that  presented  itself  to  many  living  and  strong 
men  like  Kingsley  just  entering  upon  his  career  in 
1846.  It  was  the  aspect  in  which  he  and  many 
others  saw  the  world  around  them. 

In  such  circumstrinces  the  Maurice-Kingsley 
school  elaborated  their  thought  and  took  up  their 
work.  Under  similar  pressure  as  to  whether  Chris- 
tianity remained  any  longer  living,  we  shall  see  that 
Frederick  Robertson  spent  his  noble  energies  as  a 
Christian  preacher.  It  is  as  Christian  Apologists, 
therefore,  that  they  ought  to  be  viewed  and  esti- 
mated in  the  history  of  modern  religious  thought. 
Unhappily  they  were  taken  by  the  old  orthodox 
school  for  the  most  part  differently.  The  prophetic 
side  of  their  character  and  work,  their  truly  divine 
insight,  their  living  hold  of  the  Divine  Constitu- 
tion of  man  and  the  world,  were  overlooked,  and 
all  the  details  of  their  theology  polemically  ex- 
amined— examined  and  condemned  from  a  point  of 
view  which  they  themselves  deliberately  rejected. 
It  was  Mr.  Maurice's  aim,  in  view  of  the  half 
Christian  or  wholly  materialised  forms  of  thought 
around  him,  to  reconstruct  the  Christian  ideal  that 
it  might  take  its  place  once  more  in  the  human 
heart  as  the  only  power  by  which  men  can  live 
and   die.       This    was   what    he    sought   after   more 


28o       Movements  of  Religious  TJioii-ght. 

than  anything  else.  It  was  the  aim  in  which  he  suc- 
ceeded so  far  as  he  succeeded  at  all.  His  teaching 
came  as  a  new  life-blood  to  many  who  could  accept 
neither  Anglicanism  nor  Evangelicalism.  It  gave 
them  a  Divine  Philosophy  by  which  they  could  work. 
It  helped  them  not  only  to  believe  in  God,  but  to 
realise  God  as  the  fact  of  facts,  and  Christ  as  '  Strong 
Son  of  God,  immortal  Love,'  the  '  Divine  Archetype 
of  Humanity,'  in  whom  all  human  wellbeing  lies. 
But  the  religious  world,  so  far  from  being  grateful  for 
this  service,  for  the  most  part  assailed  him  and 
those  who  agreed  with  him  as  dangerous  teachers. 
They  looked  upon  them  as  imperilling  the  Ark  of 
God  rather  than  rallying  to  its  defence. 

The  case  cannot  be  more  clearly  put  than  in  rela- 
tion to  Maurice's  Essays,  and  the  painful  discussions 
which  they  raised.  In  these  Essays  Mr.  Maurice  was 
thinking,  as  he  tells  us,  of  the  Unitarians.  It  was 
his  aim  to  convince  the  Unitarians  that  if  they  held 
to  Christ  and  Christianity  at  all  they  must  hold  to 
them  in  a  deeper  sense  than  they  did.  Christ  is 
more  than  they  professed  to  own  if  he  is  the  Christ 
at  all — the  manifestation  of  the  Father — the  revealer 
of  His  will  and  character  to  man.  The  author  may 
or  may  not  have  been  successful  in  his  aim  and  argu- 
ment. But  at  any  rate  the  issues  which  were  raised 
against  him  by  Dr.  Candlish  and  others  were  irrelevant 
issues.  They  virtually  came  to  this :  But  you  are 
utterly  wrong  in  so  far  as  you  disagree  with  the  old 
Theology,  and  fail  to  recognise  that  God  is  the  Moral 
Governor  of  the  universe  as  well  as  the  Creator 
and  Father  of  men,  and  that  in  order  to  uphold 
the    great    principles   of    his    government    sin    must 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    281 

be  dealt  with  quite  differently  from  what  you  sup- 
pose, and  the  offices  and  the  work  of  Christ  quite 
differently  conceived.  The  hostile  critics  were  right 
in  many  respects.  They  were  able  to  make 
many  points  against  Mr.  Maurice  in  the  light 
of  the  Puritan  theolog)-.  But  then  it  was  not  the 
Puritan  theology  that  Mr.  Maurice  was  thinking  of. 
He  had  deliberately  set  aside  Calvinism  at  the  outset 
of  his  ministry.  He  could  find  no  life  for  his  own 
soul  either  in  the  Evangelical  or  the  Anglican  tradi- 
tion. It  was  not  the  theology  of  either,  but  theo- 
logy itself  that  he  was  contending  for.  He  was 
thinking  of  those  who  had  not  got  the  length  of 
St.  Paul,  still  less  of  Calvin — who  did  not  see  God 
as  he  did  in  the  light  of  a  Father  at  all,  and  who, 
however  they  might  reverence  Christ,  did  not  recog- 
nise in  him  any  kind  of  a  Saviour. 

Even  if  it  were  true  that  Mr.  Maurice's  theology 
fell  short  of  the  Puritan,  or  even  of  the  Pauline  theo- 
logy, it  would  by  no  means  follow  that  it  was  to  be 
reprobated  as  these  critics  reprobated  it.  If  it  did 
rest,  as  some  of  them  contended,  on  Platonic  or  Neo- 
Platonic  forms  of  thought,  it  may  be  asked,  Did  it  do 
so  more  than  the  theology  of  Clement  of  Alexandria 
and  Origen  ;  and  must  we  deem  these  teachers  less 
Christian  because  they  adopted  certain  ideas  of 
Platonism  in  the  expression  of  Christian  doctrine? 
What  ancient  theologian  did  not  do  so  ?  Is  Tertullian 
more  orthodox  than  Clement,  or  St.  Augustine  than 
Gregory  of  Nazianzus  ?  Is  St.  John  not  a  quite 
different  type  of  theologian  from  St.  Paul  ?  and  St. 
James  from  either?  And  even  so,  is  Mr.  Maurice 
less  Christian  as  a  theologian  because  he  does   not 


2 82       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

speak  in  the  same  language  or  expound  the  same 
ideas  as  those  which  belong  to  a  wholly  different 
school  ? 

If  I  am  asked  to  pronounce  an  opinion  I  must 
often  agree  with  his  orthodox  critics  against  Mr. 
Maurice.  Sin  is  certainly  more  than  selfishness,  and 
the  atonement  more  than  the  perfect  surrender  of 
self-will  to  God.  It  is  a  satisfaction  of  Divine  justice 
as  well  as  a  surrender  to  Divine  love.  God  is  not 
merely  Love  but  Law,  and  Divine  righteousness  is 
strong  not  merely  to  make  men  righteous  but  to 
punish  all  unrighteousness.  If  it  be  a  question  between 
the  Maurician  theology  and  the  Pauline  theology, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  are  elements  in  the 
latter,  the  full  significance  of  which  Mr.  Maurice 
failed  to  see.  But  then  there  are  no  less  elements  in 
the  popular  theology  which  St.  Paul  would  have 
disowned,  and  St.  John  certainly  not  have  understood. 
The  idea  that  theology  is  a  fixed  science,  with  hard 
and  fast  propositions  partaking  of  the  nature  of 
infallibility,  is  a  superstition  which  cannot  face  the 
light  of  modern  criticism. 

The  true  attitude  of  the  Christian  thinker  to 
Maurice  and  his  teaching  is  that  of  gratitude  and  not 
of  controversial  cavil.  He  became  a  power  in  the 
spiritual  world  when  other  powers  were  comparatively 
inoperative.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  errors  of 
his  theology,  they  were  errors  of  Divine  excess. 
Instead  of  minimising  man's  relation  to  the  Divine, 
he  emphasised  it.  It  required  this  note  of  emphasis  to 
draw  men's  thoughts  to  theology  at  all,  and  to  make 
it  once  more  a  factor  in  human  thought  and  life. 
In  adopting  such  a  line  of  argument  I  am  aware  that 


F,  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    283 

I    am   doincr  what  Maurice  himself  would  not  have 
done.     He  was  too  intensely  dogmatic  in  his  own  con- 
victions to  accept  any  explanation  of  the  peculiarities 
of  his  creed.     His  creed  was,  as  he  always  maintained, 
the  Church's  creed.     He  was  not  content  to  be  toler- 
ated.    He  was  right.     Other  theologians  were  wrong. 
His  intense  spiritual  activity,  his  theological  courage, 
came  out  of  his  unwavering  dogmatism.     He  would 
have  repudiated,  therefore,  any  apology  for  the  pecu- 
liarities of  his  dogmatic  system  arising  out  of  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  time,  and  the  character  of  his  own 
education.     But  while  I  feel  bound  so  far  to  vindicate 
his  position  as  a  Christian  thinker,  I  am  not  bound  to 
do  so  on  his  own  terms.     I  can  see  how  his  dogmatic 
position  arose,  and  what    force   there  was  in  it  in  a 
time  of  materialistic  scepticism,  but  I  also  see  wherein 
it  was  undue  and  onesided.     My  business  is  to  judge 
him,  and  the  other  thinkers  who  have  passed  under 
our  review,  historically  and  not  dogmatically.     I  can 
acknowledge,  therefore,  what  was  good  in  his  theo- 
logy without  accepting  it ;  I  feel  bound  to  set  forth 
his  value  as  a  Christian  thinker  without  agreeing  with 
him.     If  there  is  one  lesson  more  than  another  that 
the   study   of  Christian    opinion   enforces,  it  is  how 
far  men,  equally  Christian,  may  differ  in  theological 
opinion,    nay — how   inevitably    in    the    progress    of 
thought,  theology,  like  philosophy,  changes  its  point 
of  view  without    losing   its    essential  Christian   char- 
acter.     It  is  but  a  poor  weapon  to  fight  with  when 
you  disagree  with  a  theologian,  to  tell  him  he  is  no 
longer  a  Christian.     It  is  a  weapon,  moreover,  which 
can   be    too    easily   exchanged    in     conflict.      Both 
Maurice  and  Kingsley  were  really,  as  Bunsen  said  of 


284       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

them,  exponents  of  *  the  deepest  elements '  of  con- 
temporary rehgious  thought,  and  it  was  this,  and 
nothing  less  than  this,  that  gave  them  their  signi- 
ficance and  influence. 

But  it  is  now  more  than  time  to  sum  up  certain 
facts  of  Maurice's  life,  and  to  glance  at  his  relations 
with  Kingsley,  in  so  far  as  they  illustrate  the  move- 
ment associated  with  their  names.  Maurice's  theo- 
logy was  virtually  complete  from  the  outset  of  his 
career  as  a  clergyman.  A  student  first  at  Cambridge 
(1823-6),  and  then  at  Oxford  (1829-32),  he  spent  the 
interval  in  London  as  editor  first  of  the  London 
Literary  Chronicle,  and  then  of  the  Athcnceum,  with 
which  the  Literary  Chronicle  was  united  (1828).  His 
great  abilities  had  been  recognised  at  Cambridge. 
He  was  the  inspiring  spirit  there  of  a  society  called 
the  '  Apostles'  Club ; '  and  there  is  an  interesting 
letter  from  Arthur  Hallam  to  Mr.  Gladstone  in  June 
1830,  speaking  of  his  influence  over  many  of  his  com- 
panions. Mr.  Gladstone  himself  witnesses  to  the 
fascination  which  he  exercised  later  at  Oxford  over 
those  who  came  in  contact  with  him. 

After  his  ordination  (1834)  he  was  much  disturbed, 
with  others,  by  the  proposal  to  abolish  the  subscription 
at  the  Universities  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.  It  was 
at  this  crisis  that  he  was  brought  for  a  time  into  close 
relation  with  the  leaders  of  the  Oxford  movement. 
Considering  that  it  was  the  necessity  for  subscribing 
these  Articles  which  had  precluded  him  from  taking 
his  degree  at  Cambridge,  he  might  have  been  sup- 
posed favourable  to  the  intended  legislation.  But, 
on  the  contrary,  he  now  showed  at  the  outset  that 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kmgsley.   285 

strange   turn    for   paradox  which    never  left  him    in 
connection   with   public    movements.      The   Articles 
had    acquired   to    him    a    sudden    importance    as    '  a 
declaration  of  the  terms  on  which  the  University  pro- 
posed to  teach  its  pupils,  and  upon  which  terms  they 
must  agree  to  learn.'     It  was  '  fairer  to  express  these 
terms  than  to  conceal   them.'      They  had  appeared 
to  him  at  Cambridge  prohibitory,  as   binding   down 
the  student  to  certain  conclusions   beyond  which  he 
was  not  to  advance,  but  now  they  seemed  '  helps  to 
him    in   pursuing   his   studies.'     This    extraordinary 
refinement  in  argument,  the  tendency  to  see  things 
in  a  different  light  from  other  people,  and  even  from 
his    own   first    plain    impression,    was    an    unhappy 
characteristic  of  Maurice  all  through  his  life.     It  led 
him,  at  a  later  time,  to  glorify  the  Athanasian  Creed 
as  peculiarly  inclusive  of  his  own  faith  and   deepest 
conviction.     There  was  nothing  disingenuous  in  this  ; 
but  there  was  an  absence  of  plain  sense  and  of  that 
historical  point  of  view,  of  the  excess  of  which  he  com- 
plained in  his  friend  Dean  Stanley.     Hailed  by  the 
Oxford    School    for   the   time   as   an   ally,   he    soon 
found    how    much    at   variance    he    was    with    them. 
They  were  thinking  in  the  main  of  how  Subscription 
kept  aU  but  themselves  out  of  the  Church.     He  was 
thinking  as  usual  of  the  good  that  might  be  got  out 
of  the    Articles    as    guides    to    higher    study.     They 
availed  themselves  of  whatever  help  was  to  be  got 
out  of  his  early  pamphlet,  Subscription  no  Bondage ; 
but  he  and  Dr.  Pusey  soon  came  to  blows;  and  the 
latter  is  said  to  have  denounced  him  and  his  assumed 
zeal  for  Church  privilege  in  no  measured  terms. 

Maurice's  first  charge  was  the  chaplaincy  of  Guy's 


286       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Hospital,  which  he  held  for  eleven  years/  during 
a  portion  of  which  time  he  was  also  Professor  of 
English  Literature  at  King's  College.  In  the  latter 
year  he  became  Chaplain  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  one 
of  the  Professors  of  Theology  in  King's  College.  He 
is  particularly  careful  to  point  out  in  one  of  his  letters 
that  he  was  chosen  to  the  latter  post  without  his 
own  seeking.  It  deserves  also  to  be  said  that  before 
his  appointment  he  had  already  make  known  ^  his 
peculiar  interpretation  of  the  phrase  '  Eternal  life/ 
which  was  afterwards  concerned  in  his  dismissal  from 
the  College.  Before  that  time  he  had  been  both 
Warburton  and  Boyle  Lecturer;  and  it  was  as 
Boyle  Lecturer  that  he  produced  the  most  popular 
of  all  his  books  already  referred  to,  Tlie  Religions  of 
the  World. 

In  1844  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Charles 
Kingsley  in  circumstances  related  in  the  lives  of  both 
of  them.  Kingsley  had  been  working  at  Eversley  as 
curate  for  about  two  years  in  the  midst  of  lovely 
scenery,  but  in  an  utterly  neglected  parish.  Not  a 
grown-up  man  or  woman  in  it  could  read  when  he 
began  his  ministry.  The  church  was  nearly  empty ; 
the  communicants  few ;  the  water  for  Holy  Baptism 
held  in  a  cracked  kitchen  basin ;  and  the  alms 
collected  in  an  old  wooden  saucer.  No  wonder  that 
the  parish  was  overrun  with  dissent  of  an  extremely 
ignorant  type.  When  Kingsley  was  settled  in  it  as 
rector  in  the  summer  of  1844,  he  set  himself  with 
characteristic  vigour  to  redeem  the  parish  and  the 
church.     He  was  then  twenty-five  years  of  age,  four- 

1  June  1835  to  1846. 

*  In  a  pamphlet  on  Mr.  Ward's  case  at  Oxford, 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    287 

teen  years  younger  than  Maurice.  He  had  passed 
through  a  wholly  different  order  of  experience. 
Brought  up  within  the  Church,  and  at  Maurice's 
earUer  university,  he  had  felt  the  spirit  of  the  time. 
The  scepticism  that  was  in  the  air,  as  the  first  life  of 
the  Oxford  movement  died  down,  strongly  assailed 
him.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  especially,  and 
what  then  seemed  to  him  the  'bigotry,  cruelty, 
and  quibbling '  of  the  Athanasian  Creed — to  which 
strangely,  like  Maurice,  he  too  afterwards  became 
vehemently  attached — formed  his  special  difficulty. 
His  doubts,  as  told  by  himself,  do  not  interest  us 
greatly.  They  were  hard  and  painful,  as  they  were 
truly  earnest ;  but  there  is  also  a  superficial  air — an 
absence  of  deeper  questioning — about  them.  His 
mind  as  yet  evidently  had  not  got  beyond  the  out- 
side of  theological  questions.  He  balances  the  alter- 
natives between  Tractarianism  and  Deism — but,  in 
point  of  fact,  the  former  never  attracted  him.  He  was 
repelled  by  its  '  ascetic  view  of  sacred  ties,'  an  aspect 
in  which  it  continued  to  be  always  repulsive  to  him. 
The  books  that  chiefly  helped  him  in  his  difficulties 
were,  in  addition  to  Carlyle's  writings,  which  were  a 
significant  factor  in  his  intellectual  development, 
Coleridge's  Aids  to  Reflection,  and  Maurice's  Kingdom 
of  Christ,''  just  then  published.  He  had  thought  of  a 
colonial  life  in  his  temporary  despair ;  but  already,  in 
1 84 1,  he  could  say  that  he  was  'saved  from  the  wild 
pride  and  darkling  tempests  of  Scepticism.'  His 
ordination  and  settlement  at  Eversley  took  place  in 
the  following  year. 

1  He  always  said   that   he   owed   more   to   Maurice's    Kingdom    of 
Christ  than  to  any  book  he  had  ever  read. — Life,  vol.  i.  p.  84. 


288       Movements  of  Religio7is  Thought, 

In  the  midst  of  his  parish  difficulties  he  naturally 
turned  to  the  author  of  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  for 
advice.  Strangely,  Mr.  Maurice  was  living,  in  the 
summer  of  1844,  in  the  elder  Kingsley's  rectory  at 
Chelsea,  where  he  had  gone  from  Guy's  Hospital 
for  change  of  air  for  his  wife  and  children.  In 
writing  to  Maurice  he  apologised  for  addressing 
one  so  much  his  superior ;  '  but  where,'  he  added, 
'  shall  the  young  priest  go  for  advice  but  to  the 
elder  prophet?  To  your  works  I  am  indebted  for 
the  foundation  of  any  coherent  view  of  the  world 
of  God,  the  meaning  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  the  spiritual  phenomena  of  the  present  and 
past  ages.'  There  was  no  exaggeration  in  this 
statement.  The  more  the  lives  of  the  two  men  are 
studied  together,  the  more  completely  does  it  appear 
that  Maurice  was  really,  as  styled  by  himself, 
Kingsley's  '  Master  '  in  Theology.  There  was  much  in 
the  Eversley  Rector  with  which  Maurice  had  nothing 
to  do, — his  eye  for  nature  and  colour,  his  love  of  sport, 
his  revels  by  the  side  of  a  country  stream  or  by  the 
sea-side, — all  those  poetic  elements  which  were  un- 
doubtedly the  highest  in  Kingsley,  and  made  him  the 
man  of  genius  that  he  was.  He  had  also  an  objective 
turn,  both  scientific  and  historical,  which  Maurice 
barely  understood,  Kingsley,  in  short,  was  a  poet 
— which  no  imagination  can  conceive  Maurice  being, 
with  the  deep  reflective  involvements  of  his  mind, 
always  returning  upon  themselves  with  a  torment- 
ing ingenuity.  But  there  was  little  in  Kingsley's 
theology  which  did  not  come  more  or  less  directly 
from  Maurice,  as  he  himself  confesses.  When  he 
first  began  to  feel  the  need  of  a  theology,  he  applied 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  CJuwles  Kingsley.    2  89 

to  Maurice.  In  1853,  when  the  Theological  Essays 
appeared,  he  wrote :  '  Maurice's  Essays  will  con- 
stitute an  epoch.  If  the  Church  of  England  rejects 
them  her  doom  is  fixed.  She  will  rot  and  die  as 
the  Alexandrian  did  before  her.  If  she  accept 
them  not  as  a  code  complete,  but  as  hints  to- 
wards a  new  method  of  thought,  she  may  save 
herself  still.'  And  twelve  years  later,  in  1865,  when 
both  had  done  the  best  they  were  ever  to  do,  in 
theology  and  other  things,  it  is  still  to  Maurice  he 
looks  as  his  theological  master.  'Your  letter  com- 
forted me,'  he  writes,  '  for  (strange  as  it  may  seem  to 
me  to  say  so)  the  only  thing  I  really  care  for — the 
only  thing  which  gives  me  comfort — is  theology  in 
the  strict  sense;  though  God  knows  I  know  little 
enough  of  it.  I  wish  one  thing,  that  you  w^ould  define 
for  me  what  you  mean  by  being  "baptized  into  a 
name."  The  preposition  in  its  transcendental  sense 
puzzles  me.  I  sometimes  seem  to  grasp  it  and  some- 
times again  lose  it  from  the  very  unrealistic  turn  of 
mind  which  I  have.  As  to  the  Trinity  I  do  under- 
stand you.  You  first  taught  me  that  the  doctrine 
was  a  live  thing,  and  not  a  mere  formula  to  be 
swallowed  by  the  undigesting  reason;  and  from  the 
time  that  I  learnt  from  you  that  a  Father  meant  a  real 
father,  a  Son  a  real  son,  and  a  Holy  Spirit  a  real 
spirit  who  was  really  good  and  holy,  I  have  been 
able  to  draw  all  sorts  of  practical  lessons  from  it  in 
the  pulpit,  and  ground  all  my  morality  and  a  great 
deal  of  my  natural  philosophy  upon  it.  and  shall  do 
so  more.  The  procession  of  the  Spirit  from  the 
Father  and  the  Son,  for  instance,  is  most  practically 
important  to  me.     If  the  Spirit  proceeds  only  from 

T 


290       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

the  Father,  the  whole  theorem  of  the  Trinity  as  well 
as  its  practical  results  fall  to  pieces  in  my  mind.  I 
don't  mean  that  good  men  in  the  Greek  Church  are 
not  better  than  I.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe  that 
every  good  man  therein  believes  in  the  procession 
from  both  Father  and  Son,  whether  he  thinks  he  does 
so  or  not.' 

This  letter  is  very  interesting  both  on  its  own 
account  and  as  showing  how  Kingslcy  retained 
the  attitude  of  a  theological  pupil  to  Maurice. 
And  the  attitude  remained  to  the  end.  In  the 
Christian  Socialist  movement  which  brought  them 
into  such  intimate  fellowship  in  1850,  Kingsley  is 
the  inspiring  as  well  as  the  inspired.  He  almost 
takes  the  place  of  leader  for  a  time  in  his  young  and 
eager  enthusiasm.  But  in  theology  he  is  throughout 
dependent  on  Maurice,  and  many  letters  pass  between 
them  on  the  subject.  There  is  especially  an  interest- 
ing series  in  1855,  following  Maurice's  expulsion  from 
King's  College.  Kingsley  was  then  again  under 
grave  doubts  concerning,  among  other  things, 
Maurice's  views  of  Sacrifice,  published  in  reply 
to  the  attacks  made  upon  him  by  Dr.  Candlish. 
Addressing  his  '  dear,  dear  Kingsley,'  Maurice  takes 
comfort  in  his  friend's  struggles  after  clearer  views, 
assured  that  being  true  to  himself  and  to  God,  He 
will  guide  him  into  all  truth.  '  Do  not  be  in  the 
least  disturbed,'  he  says,  '  because  books  of  mine 
about  Sacrifice,  or  anything  else,  do  not  satisfy  you, 
or  show  you  the  way  out  of  your  confusions.  Why 
should  they  ?  Is  not  the  death  of  Christ,  a7id  your 
death  and  mine,  a  depth  immeasurably  below  my 
soundings  ?     And  what  have  I   done,  if  I  have  done 


F.  D.  Mcnirice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    291 

anything  truly  and  honestly,  but  beseech  people  not 
to  try  and  measure  it,  but  simply  cast  themselves 
upon  the  love  of  God  which  is  manifested  in  it,  and 
trust  it  when  there  is  nothing  else  in  heaven  above 
or  earth  beneath  to  rest  upon  ? '  Again  he  says,  '  I  am 
a  Puritan  almost  incapable  of  enjoyment,  though  in 
principle  justifying  enjoyment  as  God's  gift  to  his 
creatures.  God  has  given  you  infinite  faculties  of 
enjoyment.  But  he  has  given  you  with  these  the 
higher  part  of  being  manly,  and  of  caring  for  your 
fellow-men,  and  their  miseries  and  sins.  What  I  fear 
(perhaps  most  unreasonably)  for  you  is  that  the 
first  gift  may  devour  the  second,  and  that  your 
sympathy  with  what  is  beautiful  in  nature  and  human 
society  should  make  you  less  able  to  stand  out 
against  these,  more  tolerant  of  that  which  is  eating 
into  the  hearts  of  individuals  and  nations.  Godliness 
I  am  certain  is  the  true  support  of  manliness.' 

Kingsley's  name  had  become  associated  with  what 
was  called  'muscular  Christianity.'  The  elder 
teacher  evidently  desires  to  caution  him,  as  well  as  to 
emphasise  his  own  peculiar  point  of  view.  The  two 
men  now,  and  at  all  times,  stand  before  us  in  clear  con- 
trast, if  the  light  around  Maurice  be  wavering,  as  it 
often  is.  The  precise  contents  of  his  thought,  even  in 
this  familiar  letter,  are  not  easy  to  give.  How  singular 
and  even  more  than  usually  vague  the  manner  in 
which  he  speaks  of  the  death  of  Christ !  But  then 
what  an  intense  spiritual  glow  there  is  in  his  words ! 
Whatever  may  be  his  intellectual  hesitations,  however 
difficult  it  may  be  to  fix  him  down  to  definite  pro- 
positions which  any  one  could  venture  to  repeat, 
there  is  never  any  hesitation  as  to  his  own  intense 


292       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

faith,  his  reahsation  of  the  Divine  love  as  a  solid 
reality — a  '  rock,'  as  he  says  in  the  same  letter,  '  to 
hold  fast  by,  although  the  whole  world  and  himself 
should  be  lost  out  of  sight  and  go  to  the  bottom.' 
All  his  subtleties  and  inconsistencies,  as  they  appear 
to  us,  about  the  forms  of  Divine  truth,  never  for  a 
moment  darken  his  spiritual  vision.  And  this  is 
Maurice  throughout.  The  Divine  Foundation  is 
never  doubtful  to  him,  however  strange,  wavering,  or 
paradoxical  the  expression  of  his  formal  opinions 
may  sometimes  be.  Of  all  men  of  our  time  he 
seems  to  me  to  have  realised  God  most  vividly.  I 
do  not  say  in  his  personal  life — I  do  not  venture  to 
judge  him  or  any  man  in  this  respect — but  as  the 
centre  of  a.,  knowledge  and  all  life,  as  the  core  of 
all  human  good,  personal,  domestic,  social,  national, 
ecclesiastical.  Everything  was  from  God  with  him, 
and  all  its  strength  came  straight  out  of  God.  Religion 
above  all  he  never  allowed  to  shut  out  God  from  him 
as  many  do,  as  he  constantly  complained  all  religious 
parties  did.  The  Bible  had  all  its  meaning  to  him 
as  a  direct  revelation  from  God.  It  was  God  he 
everywhere  saw  moving  through  its  pages  and 
instructing  him — a  living  God,  with  whom  he  could 
converse,  and  to  whom  he  could  go  as  having  the 
words  of  eternal  life.  It  was  this  that  made  him  so 
jealous  of  certain  modes  of  historical  criticism, 
which  it  must  be  confessed  he  did  not  fully  appre- 
ciate. It  was  this  that  made  him  prefer  the  word 
'theology'  to  religion,  which  always  seemed  to  him 
to  have  something  of  a  Pagan  meaning.  It  was  this 
also  that  made  him  so  often  say  that  all  his  know- 
ledge and  thought  began  in  theology.     It  was  said 


F.  D.  Maurice  and  Charles  Kingsley.    293 

of  Spinoza,  by  Novalis  that  he  was  a  '  God-intoxi- 
cated man,'  but  of  all  modern  men  Maurice  seems  to  me 
to  have  most  deserved  this  name.  He  lived  as  few  men 
have  ever  lived  in  the  Divine.  He  was,  as  Mr.  Glad- 
stone has  said  of  him,  applying  words  from  Dante,  'a 
spiritual  spendour.'  The  Divine  embraced  him.  He 
did  not  need  to  strive  after  it  like  most  men.  It  was  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  all  his  being — the  only  reality  in 
comparison  with  which  all  other  things  were  shadowy. 
It  was  this  more  than  anything  that  made  him  the 
spiritual  power  that  he  was.  In  the  presence  of 
Maurice  it  was  hardly  possible  to  doubt  of  a  Divine 
sphere, — of  a  spiritual  life.  While  the  commercial 
world  by  its  selfishness  was  denying  God,  and  the 
religious  world  by  its  slanders  degrading  Him,  and 
the  scientific  world  by  its  theories  hiding  Him 
from  view,  or  proclaiming  Him  unknown,  there 
was  a  reality  in  Maurice's  faith  that  left  no  room  for 
doubt.  I  know  of  no  life,  with  all  the  intellectual 
puzzles  which  it  presents,  so  intensely  and  powerfully 
Divine. 

Kingsley  was  far  less  intense  and  theological.  He 
had  a  broader  nature,  which  took  in  more  of  the 
variety  and  beauty  of  life.  He  had,  as  Maurice 
acknowledged,  a  far  higher  capacity  of  natural  en- 
joyment. But  he  too  in  everything — in  his  novel- 
writing,  in  his  social  efforts,  in  his  history  and 
science,  as  well  as  in  his  sermons — was  a  witness 
to  the  Divine.  He  did  not  glow,  as  Maurice 
did,  with  a  Divine  radiance  in  all  he  did  ;  he  had 
neither  his  'Master's'  subtlety  nor  his  profundit>' ; 
but  he  was  more  intelligible,  healthy,  and  broad- 
minded,  and  he  carried  the  spirit  of  Christianity  as 


294       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

heartily,  if  not  as  profoundly,  into  all  his  work. 
Maurice  was  more  of  the  Prophet  both  in  his  tender- 
ness and  occasional  fierceness — Kingsley  more  of 
the  Poet.  Yet  with  all  his  more  concrete  poetic 
sympathies,  the  pupil  was  earnest  as  the  theological 
master  he  delighted  to  honor.  One  who  knew  him 
well  has  said  of  him — 'The  two  most  distinctive 
features  of  his  religious  teaching  were  that  the  world 
is  God's  world  and  not  the  Devil's,  and  that  manliness 
is  entirely  compatible  with  godliness.'  The  former 
was  the  manner  in  which  he  applied  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  his  teacher  that  humanity  and  the  world  are 
originally  constituted  in  Christ  and  belong  to  God, 
whatever  footing  the  Devil  may  have  got  in  them ; 
the  second  was,  in  a  sense,  his  own  peculiar  gospel, 
springing  out  of  his  own  high  courage  and  love  of 
natural  life.  There  was  a  true  message  in  both 
truths  for  his  generation.  They  taught  that  Nature 
and  life  were  from  God  at  a  time  when  science  on 
the  one  hand,  and  asceticism  on  the  other,  tended 
to  sever  them  from  His  presence.  If  Maurice  dis- 
cerned more  deeply  the  Divine  constitution  of  things, 
Kingsley,  by  his  poetic  and  living  sympathies,  made 
the  Divine  more  visible  everywhere  around  us. 


VIII. 

*  Broad  Church  ' — continued, 

FREDERICK  W.  ROBERTSON  AND   BISHOP 
EWING. 

T^HERE  is  no  life  that  mirrors  more  completely 
the  spiritual  conflicts  of  the  fifth  decade  of  our 
century  than  that  of  Frederick  W.  Robertson.  And 
yet  at  first  his  opinions  seemed  set  in  a  fixed  groove. 
Trained  in  an  evangelical  family,  he  remained  more 
or  less  an  Evangelical  till  he  was  27  years  of  age. 
He  passed  through  Oxford  at  the  time  when  the 
Anglo-Catholic  movement  was  rising  to  its  height. 
He  was  fascinated  by  it,  but  remained  firm  to  the 
principles  of  his  youth.  He  carried  the  same  prin- 
ciples into  the  exercise  of  his  early  ministry,  and  it 
was  not  till  after  he  had  been  a  clergyman  for  some 
years  that  he  was  caught  and  carried  away  by  the 
spirit  of  his  time.  He  was  of  Scottish  parentage,  and 
partly  educated  at  the  Edinburgh  Academy.^  His 
father  was  a  soldier,  and  he  himself  looked  forward, 
as   a   boy,   to   the   same  profession.      His  heart,   in 

1  Frederick  W.  Robertson,  Suffolk,  appears  as  second  in  the  prize 
list  of  the  Edinburgh  Academy,  1832  :  his  friend  George  R.  MoncrieflF, 
standing  first.  There  are  two  sets  of  verses — one  in  Latin,  the  other 
in  English — attached  to  his  name,  but  neither  of  remarkable  merit. 

295 


296       Movements  of  Religious  TJwiight. 

fact,  was  passionately  set  on  a  soldier's  career,  and 
it  was  only  with  great  reluctance  that  he  abandoned 
the  prospect.  At  first  he  especially  recoiled  from 
entering  the  Church — yet  this  seemed  not  only  to 
his  father,  but  to  all  who  knew  him  best,  the  pro- 
fession for  which  he  was  most  fitted ;  and  at  last  his 
own  heart,  under  a  sense  of  duty,  however,  rather 
than  enthusiasm,  inclined  in  the  same  direction.  The 
singular  purity  and  devoutness  of  his  character,  his 
deep  religious  convictions  which  made  him  say,  even 
while  ardently  cherishing  the  idea  of  entering  the 
army,  that  his  object  was  not  '  to  win  laurels,  but  to  do 
good ;  '  his  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  and  earnestness  in 
all  he  did,  led  his  friends,  no  doubt,  to  the  conclu- 
sion which  they  impressed  upon  him  and  which  he 
ultimately  accepted.  He  was  from  a  boy  a  prayerful 
student  of  the  Bible,  and  sought  to  regulate  by  it 
his  own  life  and  the  lives  of  others.  When  travel- 
ling with  a  companion  in  his  twenty-first  year,  the 
same  year  that  he  entered  the  University  (1837),  he 
collected  the  servants  of  the  several  inns  at  which 
they  stayed  to  prayer  in  the  evening.  At  Oxford 
he  established  a  society  for  prayer  and  conversation 
on  the  Scriptures.  His  direct  study  of  the  Scriptures 
and  the  confidence  with  which  he  read  in  them  certain 
great  principles,  were  evidently  the  main  means  by 
which  he  resisted  the  influence  of  Newmanism.  He 
was  carried,  as  he  himself  afterwards  said,  to  the  brink 
of  the  precipice,^  but  was  held  back  by  the  force  of 
his  early  training  and  a  certain  Pauline  simplicity 
and  severity  of  biblical  thought  characteristic  of  his 
youth. 

^  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  120. 


F.   W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    297 

Robertson's  first  ministry  was  at  Winchester,  where 
he  accepted  a  curacy  in  July  1840.  He  carried  with 
him  into  his  work,  as  his  biographer  says,  '  a  grave 
and  awful  sense  of  responsibihty.'  His  religious 
character,  always  earnest,  had  deepened  at  Oxford. 
The  death  of  one  of  his  sisters  and  her  happiness  and 
peace  in  dying  had  affected  him  greatly.  Amidst  all 
the  temptations  of  his  young  life  at  Paris  (where  he 
was  for  some  time),  as  well  as  at  Oxford,  he  had  led  a 
consistent  Christian  life  and  grown  in  Christian  ex- 
perience. Especially  there  were  already  developed  in 
him  two  features  of  character  which  were  afterwards 
very  conspicuous — '  hatred  and  resistance  of  evil,  and 
a  reverence  and  effort  for  purity.'  There  was  some- 
thing striking  in  the  strength  of  his  feelings  in  both 
these  respects  during  all  his  life.  He  was  never  so 
moved  as  when  he  had  '  to  quell  a  falsehood  or  avenge 
a  wrong.'  Any  injury  to  woman  was  especially  re- 
sented by  him.  He  had,  as  his  biographer  remarks,  a 
singular  chasteness  of  spirit  which  gave  him,  in  a  large 
degree,  his  insight  into  moral  truth,  and  the  fineness 
with  which  he  could  discriminate  its  more  delicate 
shades.  Vigorous  in  health  when  young,  and  with 
many  soldierly  qualities  and  great  love  of  adventure, 
he  was  yet  constitutionally  of  a  sad  temperament,  the 
result  of  a  singularly  susceptible  nervous  organisation 
which  vibrated  acutely  in  response  to  every  influence 
of  nature  and  life.  A  more  highly  strung  mind  can 
hardly  be  imagined,  reaching  from  intense  enjoyment 
to  painful  depression.  He  seemed  always  haunted 
by  an  unfulfilled  ideal,  and  yet  his  natural  fulness  of 
feeling  went  forth  in  a  power  of  realising  all  the  higher 
pleasures  of  life  in  a  remarkable  degree.     '  The  woof 


298       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  his  own  life  '  was  dark  ' — as  he  said  of  life  in 
general — but  it  was  '  shot  with  a  warp  of  gold.' 

During  all  the  time  of  his  ministry  at  Winchester 
he  laboured  more  or  less  under  a  feeling  of  oppres- 
sive responsibility.  He  lived  rigorously,  frequently 
refraining  from  adequate  food  and  sleep,  compelling 
himself  to  rise  early,  and  systematising  his  whole 
life  under  a  sense  of  religious  devotion.  He  gave 
certain  days  to  prayer  on  definite  subjects,  and  read 
daily  books  of  devotion  with  scrupulous  adherence  to 
a  plan.  He  read  particularly  such  books  as  the  lives 
of  Martyn  and  Brainerd,  and  the  Imitation  of  Christ. 
He  continued  his  Greek  and  Hebrew  studies ;  he 
visited  the  poor  diligently ;  he  grudged  no  self-denial 
to  do  the  work  to  which  he  had  been  called.  '  Only 
one  thing  was  worth  living  for,'  he  said  to  a  friend,  'to 
do  God's  work,  and  gradually  grow  in  conformity 
to  his  image  by  mortification,  and  self-denial,  and 
prayer.  When  that  is  accomplished,  the  sooner  we 
leave  this  scene  of  weary  struggle  the  better.  Till 
then,  welcome  battle,  conflict,  victory.'  ^  Men  seldom 
think,  and  still  seldomer  write,  in  this  way  after  the 
first  years  of  youth  ;  the  words  breathe  the  intense 
zeal  of  his  youthful  ministry. 

From  the  first  Robertson  showed  special,  if  not 
marked,  gifts  as  a  preacher.  He  spoke  so  that  men 
listened  to  him.  His  voice  was  always  musical  and 
impressive  ;  his  heart  was  in  what  he  said  ;  and  while 
he  preached  the  ordinary  Evangelical  doctrines  he 
was  free  from  the  peculiar  phraseology  of  the  school. 
There  was,  however,  little  or  no  play  of  thought  in 
his   Winchester   sermons.     They   ran    on   the    usual 

'  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  61. 


7^   PV.  Robertsofi  and  Bishop  Eiving.    299 

lines,  were  full  of  '  doctrinal  analysis  and  general 
description  of  the  love  of  Christ,'  and  in  no  way 
indicated  his  future  power.  Even  his  letters  of 
this  time  arc  said  to  be  '  scarcely  worth  reading.' 
All  that  he  was  yet  to  be  remained  dormant. 
The  routine  of  his  work  absorbed  him,  and  his 
rigorous  abstinence  and  Puritan  severity  in  deal- 
ing with  himself  laid  the  seeds  of  after  disease.  '  It 
is  painful,'  says  his  biographer,  '  to  read  his  diary,  in 
which  all  his  inward  life  is  mapped  out  in  divisions, 
his  sins  and  errors  labelled,  selfishness  discovered  in 
all  his  efforts  and  resolves,  and  lists  made  out  of  the 
graces  and  gifts  which  he  needed  especially.' ' 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  after  about  a  year 
he  fell  ill.  He  thought  himself  attacked  by  the 
family  malady — consumption,  which  carried  off  his 
two  sisters.  He  did  not  care  to  live  long,  and  the 
sense  of  the  shortness  of  his  time  only  made  him 
redouble  his  efforts.  But  his  rector,^  and  others 
more  considerate  of  his  health  than  himself,  at  length 
forced  him  to  take  a  continental  holiday.  He  made 
a  visit  to  the  Rhine  and  Switzerland,  which  is 
chiefly  memorable  as  serving  to  bring  out  his  keen 
antagonism  at  once  to  Roman  Catholicism  and  Ger- 
man Neology.  He  was  bold  in  converse  with  men 
on  spiritual  subjects.  He  never  shrank  from  making 
known  his  sentiments,  and  in  his  intense  opposition 
to  Popery  sometimes  indulged  in  a  pugnacity  of 
debate  which  was  not  without  its  risks.  As  unlike 
as  possible  to  his  later  attitude,  he  was  at  this  time 

'  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  67. 

*  Mr.    Nicholson,    Rector   of  the  united    parishes   of    St.    Maurice 
St.  Mary  Kalendar,  and  St.  Peter's,  Colebrook. 


300       Movements  of  Religious  TaGiight. 

a  polemic  on  behalf  of  ordinary  British  Protestantism 
in  season  and  out  of  season.  At  Geneva  he  plunged 
eagerly  into  the  religious  questions  which  then  agi- 
tated the  city.  He  had  many  conversations  with  Cesar 
Malan  and  others  less  orthodox,  and  maintained 
always  with  zeal  his  own  views.  '  I  have  just  returned 
from  another  long  discussion  with  Malan  before  several 
persons,  which  I  do  not  like,  because  calmness  in 
argument  is  then  always  difficult.  You  think  of 
your  own  victory  instead  of  the  truth.  However,  I 
only  fenced,  and  allowed  him  to  cross-question  me. 
He  does  it  in  the  most  affectionate  and  earnest 
manner ;  but  I  could  not  yield,  because  I  believe  all 
I  said  leaned  upon  God's  truth.  He  said — and  there 
was  much  pathetic  foresight  in  the  prophecy,  little 
as  young  Robertson,  in  the  midst  of  all  his  enthu- 
siasm, felt  it  at  the  time — '  Mon  tres-cher  frere,  vous 
avez  une  triste  vie  et  un  triste  ministere.' 

Geneva  proved  the  farthest  point  of  his  travels  at 
this  time.  He  there  met  a  young  lady,  daughter  of 
a  Northamptonshire  Baronet,  and  after  a  brief 
acquaintance  married  her.  It  has  always  been  sup- 
posed that  the  deep  sadness  of  his  life  had  something 
to  do  with  this  sudden  event ;  but  the  veil  has  not  been 
lifted  for  us,  and  we  have  no  right  to  try  to  lift  it. 
He  returned  almost  immediately  after  his  marriage, 
and  settled  at  Cheltenham ;  and  here,  after  a  brief 
interval,  he  began  the  second  stage  of  his  ministry  in 
circumstances  that  seemed  to  promise  happiness  and 
usefulness.  He  was  greatly  attached  to  his  rector, 
the  Rev.  Archibald  Boyd,  afterwards  rector  at  St. 
James's,  Paddington,  and  latterly  Dean  of  Exeter. 
He  looked  up  to  him  for  a  time  with  the  greatest 


F.   IV.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Eioing.    301 

respect,  and  was  even  disposed  to  learn  from  him  as 
a  preacher.  His  own  preaching  at  Cheltenham  from 
the  first  evidently  struck  a  higher  key  than  that  of 
his  Winchester  ministry.  There  are  many  testi- 
monies to  this  effect.  One  friend  writes,  '  I  had  a 
prejudice  against  him,  through  no  fault  of  his,  but 
I  was  not  merely  struck  but  startled  by  his  sermon. 
The  high  order  of  thought,  the  large  and  clear  con- 
ception,  the  breadth  of  view,  the  passion  held  in  leash, 
the  tremulously  earnest  tone,  the  utter  forgetfulness 
of  self  in  his  subject,  and  the  abundance  of  the  heart 
out  of  which  the  mouth  speaks,  made  me  feel  indeed 
that  here  indeed  was  one  whom  it  would  be  well  to 
miss  no  opportunity  of  hearing.  From  the  first  he 
largely  swayed  those  minds  that  had  any  point  of 
contact  with  him.'  It  seemed  as  if  he  had  found  a 
fitting  sphere  for  his  powers.  But  gradually  he  fell  into 
his  old  depression.  There  were  evidently  external  as 
well  as  internal  causes  for  this,  which  are  not  fully 
explained ;  the  relations  with  his  Rector,  at  first  so 
cordial,  seem  to  have  altered.  He  took  it  into  his 
head  that  his  sermons  were  not  intelligible  to  the  con- 
gregation. The  admirers  of  the  Rector's  preaching 
were  plainly  no  admirers  of  his — the  two  men  were 
quite  different  in  their  cast  of  thought,  and  the  ladies 
who  fluttered  around  the  Incumbent  did  not  care  for 
the  Curate.  The  idea  that  he  was  more  or  less  of  a 
failure  assailed  him.  '  Sad  and  dispirited,'  is  an  entry 
in  his  diary  in  1845,  after  ^e  had  been  about  three 
years  in  Cheltenham. 

During  all  this  time  his  intellectual  powers  were 
rapidly  growing.  Carlyle's  books  became  favourite 
studies.      German    literature   and    theology    opened 


302       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

up  their  treasures  to  him.  '  He  began  to  hew  out 
his  own  path  to  his  convictions.'  How  far  this  new 
spirit,  which  made  itself  felt  no  doubt  in  his  ser- 
mons, may  have  had  to  do  with  his  discomfort  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duty,  is  not  said;  but  there  can  be 
httle  doubt  that  the  change  that  was  gradually  pass- 
ing over  his  thought  was  the  main  factor  in  the 
mental  disturbance  that  now  overtook  him.  Since 
1843,  his  attitude  towards  the  Evangelical  party 
had  begun  to  alter.  Of  this  date  he  says,  '  As 
to  the  state  of  the  Evangelical  clergy,  I  think  it 
lamentable.  I  see  sentiment  instead  of  principle, 
a  miserable  mawkish  religion  superseding  a  state 
which  once  was  healthy.  Their  adherents  I  love  less 
than  themselves,  for  they  are  but  copies  of  their  faults 
in  a  large  edition.  I  stand  nearly  alone,  a  Theological 
Ishmael.  The  Tractarians  despise  me,  and  the  Evan- 
gelicals somewhat  loudly  express  their  doubts  of  me.' 
This  is  the  earliest  indication  of  Robertson's  decided 
dissatisfaction  with  his  old  views.  The  change  had 
begun  within  a  year  of  the  commencement  of  his 
ministry  at  Cheltenham.  The  three  years  which 
followed  were  destined  to  see  a  complete  revolution  in 
his  thought.  Doubts  came  to  him  in  quick  succession. 
The  study  of  German,  the  enlarged  study  of  Scripture, 
a  deeper  acquaintance  with  his  own  heart,  dissatisfac- 
tion apparently  with  the  Rector's  teaching  and  modes 
of  action,  which  had  at  first  so  much  attracted  him, 
seem  all  to  have  contributed  to  the  result.  His  ser- 
mons altered,  and  it  became  painful  for  him  to  preach, 
The  reaction  was  violent  in  his  case,  in  proportion  to 
the  unhesitating  acceptance  which  he  had  given  to 
the    Evangelical    doctrines.      The   whole    system    on 


F.   W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    303 

which  he  had  founded  his  faith  and  his  work  fell 
away  under  him  irretrievably,  and  after  a  struggle  to 
maintain  the  old  with  the  new,  he  gave  way  entirely, 
and  plunged  into  a  state  of  spiritual  agony,  so  awful, 
that  it  not  only  shook  his  health  to  its  centre,  but 
smote  his  spirit  down  into  so  profound  a  darkness, 
that  of  all  his  early  faiths  but  one  remained,  '  It  must 
be  right  to  do  right.' 

In  such  a  state  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  con- 
tinue preaching.  The  state  of  his  health  alone  for- 
bade this ;  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  but  once 
more  to  leave  the  scene  of  his  ministry,  and  seek  for 
some  assuagement  of  his  trouble  in  continental  travel. 
There  is  no  picture  of  the  spiritual  struggles  of  this 
time,  when  Froude,  and  Clough,  and  Sterling  were 
all  in  the  death-throes  of  their  early  faith,  to  be  com- 
pared in  touching  interest  with  that  of  Frederick 
Robertson.  He  has  himself  told  the  story  of  it,  and 
the  tremulous  depths  of  his  language  bring  us  very 
near  his  heart.  He  went  down  into  the  darkness, 
and  all  light  for  a  time  seemed  to  leave  him — all 
save  the  sense  of  right  and  good.  '  If  there  be  no 
God  and  no  future  state,  yet  even  then  it  is  better 
to  be  generous  than  selfish,  better  to  be  chaste  than 
licentious,  better  to  be  true  than  false,  better  to  be 
brave  than  to  be  a  coward.'  So  he  felt,  and  from  this 
moral  basis  he  fought  his  way  again  upward  towards 
the  light. 

Robertson's  character  stands  singularly  free  in  this 
great  crisis  from  all  trace  of  lower  feeling  or  self- 
involution — from  all  that  vanity,  pride,  or  presumption 
which  so  frequently  accompany  such  states  even  in 
large  minds.     There  is  no  trace  in  him  of  mere  intel- 


304       Move77ients  of  Religious  TJwiight. 

lectualism,  still  less  of  sentimentalism,  as  if  it  were 
something  fine  to  be  the  victim  of  Divine  despair, 
nor  is  there,  as  we  may  see  in  George  Eliot,  any 
sense  of  superiority  over  the  logic  of  superstition, 
— only  a  profound  and  unutterable  misery,  as  of 
one  from  whom  a  divine  treasure  had  been  stolen, 
and  to  whom  there  had  come  '  a  fearful  loneliness  of 
spirit,'  from  which  the  stars  of  hope  had  gone  out 
one  by  one.  He  was  driven  into  the  wilderness  by 
sheer  force  of  spiritual  perplexity ;  he  passed  out  of 
sight  of  men  and  books,  that  he  might  fight  with 
his  doubts  in  calm  resolution.  '  He  did  not  seek  for 
sympathy.  He  was  accustomed,  as  he  said,  to  con- 
sume his  own  smoke.'  I  know  nothing  more  touch- 
ing in  biography  than  his  lonely  wanderings  in  the 
Tyrol  amidst  scenery  the  excitement  of  which  seemed 
only  for  a  time  to  deepen  his  mental  unrest.  It  is  a 
strange  and  painful  yet  exalting  experience  when  the 
weary  heart  carries  with  it  the  pressure  of  an  intoler- 
able self-consciousness  into  such  scenes  of  solemn 
beauty,  and  feels  the  glory  around  only  to  deepen  the 
awe  of  life  and  the  burden  of  thought.  The  clouds, 
instead  of  being  driven  away,  seem  for  a  time  only 
to  gather  shape  and  consistency ;  but  all  the  while 
Nature  is  doing  its  healing  work,  and  the  brain 
once  more  rallying  its  exhausted  forces,  till,  with  the 
return  of  health,  it  is  found  that  the  scenes  through 
which  we  have  passed  have  wrought  like  magic, 
bringing  not  only  peace,  but  expansion  and  maturity 
of  intellect' 

^  As  he  himself  says  in  one  of  his  letters,  vol.  i.  p.  274 — '  The  solI 
collects  its  mightiest  forces  by  being  thrown  in  upon  itself,  and  coerced 
solitude  often  matures  the  mental  and  moral  character  marvellously.' 


/^   JV.  Robertson  ajid  Bishop  Ewing.    305 

The  autumn  that  Robertson  spent  in  the  Tyrol 
and  at  Heidelberg  in  1846  was  the  turning-point  of 
his  life.  His  Evangelical  faith  was  gone  before  he 
left  England — worn  out  of  his  heart  and  mind  by- 
many  causes.  The  great  principles  of  morality,  or 
Ursachen,  as  he  called  them,  were  alone  left  to  him ; 
all  else  was  gone.  '  Who  was  Christ  ?  What  are 
miracles?  What  do  you  mean  by  inspiration?  Is 
the  resurrection  a  fact  or  a  myth?  What  saves  a 
man — his  own  character,  or  that  of  another  ?  Is 
the  next  life  individual  consciousness  or  continua- 
tion of  the  consciousness  of  the  universe  ? '  These 
and  many  other  questions — to  which  he  says  'Krause 
would  return  one  answer,  Neander  another,  and  Dr. 
Chalmers  another  ' — tormented  him.  They  had  come 
upon  him  not  suddenly.  He  writes  to  a  friend,  the 
same  apparently  who  had  introduced  him  to  Ger- 
manism, that  he  must  not  distress  himself,  as  if  he 
were  responsible  for  his  doubts.  But  if  the  sense  of 
religious  difficulties  had  been  gradually  growing  in 
his  mind  before,  it  was  his  experience  and  ministry 
at  Cheltenham  that  ripened  them.  He  may  have 
known  something  of  them  before ;  but  there  is 
nothing  less  like  real  spiritual  perplexity  than  the 
sort  of  way  in  which  young  minds  sometimes  play 
with  difficulties.  And  it  was  only  when  driven 
from  Cheltenham  in  the  autumn  of  1846  that  the 
rain  descended  and  the  floods  came,  and  the  wind 
beat  upon  his  house  till  it  shook  to  its  founda- 
tions. It  was  only  then  certainly,  and  after  much 
spiritual  struggle,  that  he  began  to  build  again 
from  the  foundation.  His  whole  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual   nature    underwent  a  change.       He  laid  hold 

U 


3o6      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  religious  questions  in  a  way  he  had  never  done 
before.  His  vision  was  enlarged,  his  grasp  became 
stronger,  richer,  more  penetrating.  All  the  ser- 
mons and  writings  by  which  he  is  known  are  after 
this  date.  He  had  realised  his  own  wish.  As  a 
friend  and  he  looked  at  the  summit  of  Skiddaw 
enveloped  in  a  mist,  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  to 
the  Continent,  he  said  to  him,  '  I  w^ould  not  have  my 
head,  like  the  peak  of  that  mountain,  involved  in 
cloud  for  all  that  you  could  offer  me.'  '  I  would,' 
rejoined  Robertson  quickly,  *  for  by  and  by  the  cloud 
and  mist  will  roll  away,  and  the  sun  will  come  down 
upon  it  in  all  his  glory.'  So  it  proved  with  him. 
The  cloud  rolled  away :  he  emerged  into  a  radi- 
ance, which  did  not  always  abide  with  him  in  its 
fulness,  but  which  never  again  left  him.  Up  to  this 
point  he  was  only  a  promising  preacher.  Henceforth 
he  became,  beyond  all  question,  one  of  the  spiritual 
thinkers  of  his  time — strong  in  every  fibre  of  in- 
tellectual and  religious  life.  In  the  silence  and 
solitude  of  the  mountains  of  the  Tyrol  his  '  soul,  left 
to  explore  its  own  recesses,  and  to  feel  its  nothing- 
ness in  the  presence  of  the  Infinite,'  had  laid  its  foun- 
dations deep  and  sure. 

He  was  two  months  at  Oxford  before  settling  at 
Brighton ;  and  here  he  enjoyed  for  the  first  time 
the  full  freedom  of  preaching.  He  began  rapidly 
to  draw  attention.  The  undergraduates  were  throng- 
ing the  church,  and  beginning  to  hang  upon  his 
words,  when  the  sudden  change  to  Brighton  came. 
He  began  his  ministry  there  in  the  autumn  of  1847. 
He  was  still  only  31  ;  but  his  mind  now  opened 
at  once  to  its  full  powers.      His   genius   was   never 


F.   IV.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    307 

brighter  or  more  '  productive  '  than  during  his  first 
two  years  at  Brighton.  His  inborn  gifts  of  eloquence 
— of  luminous  intelligence — his  capacity  of  swaying 
the  human  heart  and  of  bringing  light  to  the  most 
difficult  subjects,  all  came  forth  in  their  full  develop- 
ment. He  seemed  as  if  he  knew  that  his  time  would 
be  short ;  and,  '  unhasting,  yet  unresting,'  he  gave 
himself  to  make  full  proof  of  his  ministry. 

It  was  as  a  preacher  that  Frederick  Robertson 
became  one  of  the  spiritual  forces  of  his  time.  He 
was  also  active  as  a  philanthropist — as  a  friend  of 
working  men,  who  gathered  around  him  in  numbers 
and  with  eager  admiration.  He  delivered  lectures  on 
Poetry,  and  he  published  an  analysis  of  Tennyson's 
In  Memoriam  of  rare  value.  His  literary  powers 
were  of  the  highest  order,  especially  his  faculty  for 
poetic  criticism.  His  theological  learning  was  ample, 
and  thoroughly  his  own,  and  at  one  time  he  projected 
a  work  on  '  Inspiration.'  But  it  was  in  the  pulpit 
that  he  put  forth  all  his  intellectual  and  spiritual 
strength,  and  his  'Sermons'  remain  the  permanent 
memorial  of  his  genius  and  of  the  strong  impulses 
of  new  and  living  thought  that  came  from  him.  It 
is  as  a  preacher,  therefore,  that  we  are  alone  called 
upon  to  estimate  him. 

What  then  were  the  elements  of  his  rare  and  almost 
unexampled  influence,  not  merely  while  he  lived, 
but  since  his  death  ?  For  of  him,  of  all  preachers, 
may  it  be  truly  said,  that  'being  dead,  he  yet 
speaketh.'  His  sermons,  which,  with  a  single  ex- 
ception, have  all  been  published  since  his  death, 
and  many  of  them  m  an  imperfect  form,  have  not 
only  perpetuated  his  fame,  but  spread  the  influence 


3o8       Movements  of  Religions  Thought. 

of  his  thought  far  and  wide  beyond  any  bounds  to 
which  his  Hving  voice  could  have  extended.  We 
have  already  spoken  of  his  impressive  voice  and 
manner.  His  voice  is  described  as  'low  pitched, 
deep  and  penetrating,  seldom  rising ;  but  when  it 
did,  going  forth  in  a  deep  volume  of  sound  like 
a  great  bell,'  thrilling  from  the  repression  rather 
than  excitement  of  feeling.  Like  many  other  men 
with  no  ear  for  music,  he  was  yet  a  subtle  master  of 
sound,  just  as  he  was  peculiarly  susceptible  to  its 
witchery  in  others.  There  were  states  in  which  it 
would  move  him  indescribably,  and  so  '  linger  upon 
his  ear  that  he  could  not  sleep  at  night.'  This  was 
only  a  part  of  his  singular  sensibility  to  all  ,sense- 
impressions — all  influences  of  form  and  colour  as 
well  as  sound.  Brightness,  beauty  of  any  kind, 
affected  him  directly,  and  it  made  all  the  difference 
in  the  world  to  him  whether  he  had  to  compose  in  a 
room  facing  to  the  north  or  the  south.  It  was  this 
same  sensitiveness  that  gave  him  such  an  exquisite 
perception  of  natural  scenery,  so  that  its  glow  or 
terror,  its  wildness  or  sweetness,  touched  him  to  the 
very  quick.  There  is  nothing  in  his  sermons  and  lec- 
tures more  exquisite  than  some  of  his  reminiscences 
of  his  wanderings  in  the  Tyrol.  They  are  like  bits  of 
sudden  glory  thrown  upon  a  canvas,  never  for  their 
own  sake  merely,  but  as  illustrating  some  hidden 
chords  of  feeling  or  some  fresh  development  of  truth. 
None  but  the  eye  of  an  artist  could  have  seized  the 
picture,  and  no  one  but  with  rare  gifts  as  a  thinker 
could  have  fitted  the  picture  to  the  argument. 

Apart    from    voice,    Robertson's    external    charac- 
teristics   as   a  preacher  were    not   specially  effective. 


/^   IV.  Robertso7i  and  Bishop  Ewiitg.    309 

He  was  entirely  without  oratorical  parade.  He  had 
hardly  any  gesture  save  a  slow  motion  of  his  hand 
upwards,  and  when  worn  and  ill  in  his  last  years,  a 
fatal  disease  consuming  both  brain  and  heart,  he 
stood  almost  motionless  in  the  pulpit,  '  his  pale  thin 
face  and  tall  emaciated  form  seeming,  as  he  spoke,  to 
be  glowing  as  alabaster  glows  when  lit  up  by  an  in- 
ward fire.'  '  When  he  began  his  sermon,  he  held  in 
his  hand  a  small  slip  of  paper  with  a  few  notes  upon 
it.  He  referred  to  it  now  and  then  ;  but  before  ten 
minutes  had  gone  by,  it  was  crushed  to  uselessness  in 
his  grasp,  for  he  knit  his  fingers  together  over  it,  as 
he  knit  his  words  over  his  thought' 

It  was  in  all  the  nobler  qualities  of  thought,  insight, 
and  feeling  that  he  excelled,  as  it  is  these  qualities 
that  still  live  in  his  sermons  and  have  made  them 
such  a  marvellous  power.  He  was  characteristically 
a  Thinker  in  the  Pulpit.  He  went  straight  to  the 
heart  of  every  subject  that  he  touched,  and  with 
a  rare  combination  of  imaginative  and  dialectic 
power  brought  out  all  its  meaning.  He  felt  a 
truth  before  he  expressed  it ;  but  when  once  he 
felt  it,  and  by  patient  study  had  made  it  his  own, 
he  wrought  it  with  the  most  admirable  logic — a  logic 
closely  linked,  yet  living  in  every  link — into  the 
minds  of  his  hearers.  This  live  glowing  concatenated 
sequence  of  thought  is  seen  in  all  his  greater  sermons. 
It  could  only  have  been  forged  in  a  brain  stirred  to 
its  depths, — on  fire  with  the  ideas  which  possessed  him 
for  the  time, — yet  never  mastered  by,  always  mastering, 
his  subject.  This  impress  of  creative  force  as  he 
proceeded  in  his  sermons  gives  them  their  wonderful 
perfection  of  form   amidst  all  their  hurrying  energy. 


3IO      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

They  are    many  of  them  great  as  literary  composi- 
tions with  a  Hving  movement  rare  even  in  the  higher 
hterature.     The  truth  is,  they  were  Hterally  the  crea- 
tion of  moments  of  inspired  utterance.     We  cannot 
imagine  them  written  in  cold  blood.     Their  organisa- 
tion shows  a  heated  yet  controlled  enthusiasm.      '  He 
disentangled    his    subject,  as -he  advanced,  from  the 
crowd  of  images  and  thoughts  which  clustered  round 
it.       He  exercised  a   severe  choice  over  this  crowd, 
and    rejected  what  was   superabundant.      There  was 
no  confusion  in  his  mind.      Step  by  step  he  led  his 
hearers  from  point  to  point  till  at  last  he  placed  them 
on  the  summit  where  they  could  see  all  the  landscape 
of  his  subject  in  luminous  and  connected  order.      He 
hated  an  isolated  thought.     He  was  not  happy  till  he 
had  ranged  it  under  a  principle.      Once  there  it  was 
found  to  be  linked    to  a    thousand    others.      Hence 
arose    his    affluence  of   ideas,  his    ability  for    seizing 
remote  analogies,  his  wide   grasp  and   lucid  arrange- 
ment of  his  subject,  his  power  of  making  it,  if  abstruse, 
clear,  if  common,  great ;    if  great,   not  too  great  for 
human    nature's   daily  food.      For   he  was  not  only 
a  thinker,  but  the  thinker  for  men.     All  thought  he 
directed  to  human  ends.     Far  above  his  keenness  of 
sympathy  for  the  true  and  beautiful  was  his  sympathy 
for  the  true  and  beautiful  in  union  with  living  hearts.' ' 
If  the  highest  work  of  thought  is  to  illuminate  a  sub- 
ject— to    pierce  to  its    heart,  and  unfold   in  creative 
order  all  its  parts,  and  not  merely  to  tell  you  about 
it  and  what  others  have  thought  of  it — to  make  alive 
a  new  order  of  ideas  and  not  merely  explain  an  old 
order — then    Frederick    Robertson    is    certainly   the 

^Zi/f,  vol.  i.  pp.  193-4- 


F.   W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    3 1 1 

greatest  thinker  who  has  appeared  in  the  pulpit  in 
modern  times.  Other  preachers  may  have  been  more 
eloquent  in  the  ordinary  sense,  more  capable  of  sway- 
ing with  delight  varied  audiences,  but  there  are  no 
sermons  comparable  to  his  in  sustained  elevation  of 
thought.  There  are  none  that  carry  readers  so 
steadily  on  the  wings  of  spiritual  and  imaginative 
reason  till  they  enter  into  the  very  life  of  the  subject, 
and  see  eye  to  eye  with  the  preacher.  How  vividly, 
for  example,  do  we  realise  the  contrasted  attitude  of 
Jew  and  Gentile  to  the  Cross  of  Christ  in  his  famous 
sermons  '  The  Jews  require  a  sign,  and  the  Greeks 
seek  after  wisdom,  but  we  preach  Christ  crucified.' 
How  does  '  The  Star  in  the  East '  assume  meaning  as 
he  expounds  it?  With  what  a  freshness  does  he 
discourse  of  '  Christ's  Estimate  of  Sin,'  and  his 
creative  vision  of  the  Divine  capacities  that  still  lived 
in  humanity  amidst  all  its  sinful  ruin  ?  How  does 
the  loneliness  of  Christ  shadow  us,  and  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  fill  our  hearts  as  he  speaks  of  them?  His 
thought  was  not  only  thorough.  It  not  only  went 
into  a  subject  and  round  it,  and  embraced  it  in  all  its 
essential  bearings,  but  it  pictured  it.  It  made  it 
alive.  It  pierced  it  through  and  through  at  once 
with  light  and  life. 

But  this  divine  rationality — rare  as  it  is — would  not 
have  made  Robertson's  sermons  all  the  power  they 
have  been  apart  from  other  and  still  higher  qualities. 
With  all  his  intellectuality  he  is  never  far  from  the 
depths  of  the  spiritual  life.  And  he  touches  these 
depths — the  secrets  of  the  heart,  the  sorrows  of  sin, 
aspirations  after  holiness,  not  only  with  an  exquisite 
tenderness,    sympathy,   and    penetrating,  knowledge,. 


3 1 2       Moveineiits  of  Religious  Thought. 

but  above  all  with  a  simplicity,  directness,  and  honesty 
that  leave  almost  all  preachers  behind.  We  know  of 
no  sermons  that  search  the  heart,  we  do  not  say  more 
delicately,  but  with  a  straighter,  clearer  delicacy  than 
Robertson's.  Newman  can  play  upon  richer  and 
more  tangled  chords  of  spiritual  feeling,  he  can 
awaken  and  startle  the  conscience  with  more 
solemnity,  but  there  are  intricacies  and  not  unfre- 
quently  sophistries  in  Newman's  most  moving  appeals. 
It  is  the  image  of  the  Church  or  the  authority  of 
dogma  that  plays  with  him  the  part  of  spiritual 
judge.  You  require  to  be  a  Churchman  to  feel  the 
full  force  of  what  he  says.  He  often  deals  obliquely 
with  the  conscience,  and  delights  to  take  it  at  a  disad- 
vantage. In  Robertson  the  play  of  spiritual  feeling 
is  direct  as  it  is  intense.  There  is  not  a  trace  of 
sophistry  in  the  most  subtle  of  his  spiritual  analyses 
or  the  most  powerful  of  his  spiritual  appeals.  Our 
common  spiritual  nature,  and  the  great  chords  of 
feeling  that  lie  in  it,  and  not  mere  churchly  feeling 
or  over-drilled  conscience,  are  the  subjects  with  which 
he  deals.  Above  all  it  is  Christ  himself,  the  living 
Christ,  and  not  any  mere  image  of  his  authority 
or  notion  about  him,  with  which  he  plies  the  heart. 
'  My  whole  heart's  expression,'  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters,^  '  is  "  none  but  Christ,"  not  in  so-called  evan- 
gelical sense,  but  in  a  deeper  real  sense — the  mind  of 
Christ;  to  feel  as  He  felt;  to  judge  the  world,  and  to 
estimate  the  world's  maxims  as  He  judged  and  esti- 
mated. To  realise  that  is  to  feel  none  but  Christ ! 
But  then  in  proportion  as  a  man  does  that,  he  is 
stripping  himself  of  garment  after  garment  till  his 
1  Vol.  i.  p.  154. 


F.  W.  Robertso7i  and  Bishop  Ewing.    3 1 3 

soul  becomes  naked  of  that  which  once  seemed  part 
of  himself;  he  is  not  only  giving  up  prejudice  after 
prejudice,  but  also  renouncing  sj'mpathy  after  sym- 
pathy with  friends  whose  smile  and  approbation  were 
once  his  life.' 

There  is  in  this  last  sentence  a  touch  of  exag- 
geration. He  was  apt  to  generalise  too  painfully 
from  his  own  experience.  But  there  w^as  no  exag- 
geration in  the  intensity  with  which  he  sought  for 
himself  nearness  to  Christ.  The  peculiar  directness 
of  his  love  to  Christ  was  the  root  of  all  his  life  and 
effort.  '  It  was  a  conscious  personal  realised  devo- 
tion,' too  sacred  to  speak  much  about.  •  It  filled  his 
whole  soul  and  left  him  alone  with  the  overpowering 
consciousness  of  the  Divine  Presence.  It  was  this 
feeling  that  dictated  his  famous  words  when  he  spoke 
in  the  Town  Hall  of  Brighton  to  the  working  men 
about  infidel  publications.  '  I  refuse  to  permit  discus- 
sion respecting  the  love  which  a  Christian  man  bears 
to  his  Redeemer — a  love  more  delicate  far  than  the  love 
which  was  ever  borne  to  sigter  or  the  adoration  with 
which  he  regards  his  God — a  reverence  more  sacred 
than  ever  man  bore  to  mother.'  This  supreme  feel- 
ing towards  Christ  pervades  all  Robertson's  sermons. 
Every  subject  is  brought  more  or  less  into  direct 
relation  with  Christ,  and  glows  or  darkens  in  the  light 
of  His  presence.  It  was  his  hold  of  the  '  mind  of 
Christ,'  and  the  flashes  of  insight  that  constantly 
came  from  this  source  that  made  him  so  helpful  as 
well  as  powerful  a  preacher.  Above  all  he  dealt  with 
these  two  great  realities — '  Christ  and  the  soul.' 

Closely  allied  with  this  was  his  love  of  the  truth  in 
all  things.     To  do  and  say  the  right  thing  because  it 


3 1 4      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

is  right — '  to  dare  to  gaze  on  the  splendour  of  the 
naked  truth  without  putting  a  veil  before  it  to  terrify- 
any  by  mystery  and  vagueness — to  live  by  love  and 
not  by  fear — that  is  the  life  of  a  true  brave  man  who 
will  take  Christ  and  his  mind  for  the  truth  instead 
of  the  clamour  either  of  the  worldly  world  or  the 
religious  world.'  He  had  no  pet  commonplaces  to 
enforce  either  of  tradition  or  doctrine.  His  aim 
was  to  see  every  question  in  the  pure  light  of  the 
gospel — to  show  how  Christ  had  grasped  the  pro- 
blems of  thought  and  of  society  at  their  root,  and 
given  forth  fertile  principles  applying  to  all  time. 
He  liked  to  be  regarded  as  a  teacher  rather  than  a 
preacher.  He  hated  using  fine  words  about  religion, 
or  being  supposed  a  fine  talker.  In  the  reaction 
which  frequently  came  to  him  after  preaching  he  was 
disposed  to  undervalue  it  altogether,  and  even  to 
speak  of  it  with  contempt,  He  seemed  to  himself  at 
times  to  do  so  little  good,  and  the  buzz  that  besets 
popularity  in  the  pulpit  rung  painfully  in  his  ears. 
It  was  impossible  to  offend  him  more  than  to  speak  of 
him  as  a  popular  preacher.  He  hated  the  idea.  There 
was  to  him  a  sort  of  degradation  in  it ;  and  much  of 
the  indignant  scorn  and  pride  which  rushed  out  some- 
times in  his  words  took  their  keenness  from  this 
source.  There  was  a  certain  morbid  feeling  in 
this  as  in  other  points,  but  it  all  came  of  the  deep 
truthfulness  of  the  man,  in  whom  the  oratorical 
instinct,  powerful  as  it  was,  never  overpowered  for 
a  moment  the  higher  qualities  of  sense,  judgment, 
taste,  and  reason. 

His    theological    standpoint    is    in    some    respects 
difficult  to  define.     His  biographer  says,  '  he  was  the 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    3 1 5 

child  of  no  theological  father.     He  owned  no  master 
but  Christ ;  and  he  did   not  care,  provided  he  fought 
under    him    the   good    fight,    to   what   regiment   he 
belonged.'     The  term  '  Broad  Church,'  used  as  a  dis- 
tinctive party  name,  is   used  of  him,  as  throughout, 
with  reserve.      He  was  certainly   neither   Tractarian 
nor  Evangelical ;  and  in  this  sense  he  was  '  broad  ' — 
that  he  interpreted   Christianity  and  the   Church  in 
the   widest   sense   both    historically   and    spiritually. 
All  men  who  own  their  spiritual  heritage  in  baptism 
were  to  him  the    children  of   a   common    God  and 
Father.      They   were  neither  '  made  the   children   of 
God  '  by  baptism,  nor  was  there  any  doubt  as  to  their 
position.     He  approved  of  the    Gorham  decision  not 
because  he  agreed  with   Mr.  Gorham,  but  because  it 
left   the  question    open.       If    he    differed    from    Mr. 
Gorham  he  certainly  differed  also  from  the  Bishop  of 
Exeter.      Baptism,  he  said,  is  the  special   revelation 
of  the  great  truth  that  all  who  are  born  into  the  world 
are  children  of  God  by  right.      The  truth  or  fact  is 
not  dependent  on  the  sacrament,  nor  on  the  faith  of 
the  recipient.      It  is  a  fact  before  we  believe  it,  else 
how  could  we  be  asked    to  believe  it  ?    But    it  must 
be  acknowledged  and  acted  upon.     We  must  believe 
it  and  live  it.     When  the   Catechism   says,  '  My  bap- 
tism, wherein    I  was    made    a   child  of    God,'    the 
meaning  is   the   same   as    in  the  saying,  '  the  Queen 
is  made  Queen  at  her  coronation.'     She  was  Queen 
before ;  nay,  if  she  had   not  been   Queen,  coronation 
could  not  make  her  Queen.^     Against  this  view  he 
set  the  Tractarian  as  implying  the   magical  creation 
of   a  nature  at   the    moment    of   baptism  ;    and   the 
'  See  Sermons  on  Baptism,  second  Series,  and  Letters,  vol.  ii.  et  seq. 


3 1 6      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

Evangelical  as  doing  the  same,  but  only  in  select  cases. 
Either  view  appeared  to  him  to  destroy  the  essential 
nature  of  Christianity.  His  position  was  virtually  the 
same  as  Mr.  Maurice's,  but  he  seized  it  with  a 
healthier  breadth.  Maurice  equally  repudiated  any 
magical  efficacy  in  the  rite,  but  he  fell  back  into  a 
species  of  ritualistic  magic  in  attaching  a  special 
efficacy  to  the  sacrament  as  administered  in  the 
Church  of  England.  Robertson  neither  implies  nor 
asserts  any  such  restriction. 

His  explanation  of  baptism  was  closely  connected 
with  his  whole  view  of  dogma.  He  did  not  reject 
dogma  even  when  its  form  repelled  him.  He  tried 
to  find  its  inner  and  comprehensive  meaning.  There 
was  to  him  a  certain  verity  underlying  all  dogma. 
The  whole  verity  no  dogma  could  express  or 
measure.  It  only  tried  to  do  so.  It  was  a  proxi- 
mate, tentative,  or  partial,  but  never  complete  or 
final  interpretation  of  Divine  Truth.  So  he  always 
asked  of  a  dogma.  What  does  it  really  mean  ?  Not 
what  did  it  mean  in  the  language,  of  those  who 
spoke  it.  *  How  in  my  language  can  I  put 
into  form  the  underlying  truth — in  corrected  form 
if  possible, — but  in  only  approximate  form  after 
air  ...  '  God's  truth  must  be  boundless.  Trac- 
tarians  and  Evangelicals  suppose  that  it  is  a  pond 
which  you  can  walk  round  and  say,  "  I  hold  the 
truth."  What,  all  !  Yes,  all ;  there  it  is  circumscribed, 
defined,  proved,  quite  large  enough  to  be  the  im- 
measurable Gospel  of  the  Lord  of  the  Universe  ! '  ^ 
There  is  wisdom  as  well  as  breadth  in  such  words — a 
higher  wisdom  than  many  identified  with  the  '  Broad 

'  Vol.  ii.  p.  41. 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    3 1 7 

Church  '  knew.  Neither  Maurice  nor  Kingsley  ever 
reached  the  true  rational  standpoint  as  to  creeds  and 
formulas.  They  failed  to  understand  the  profound  dis- 
trust that  a  certain  order  of  spiritual  minds  have  of  all 
statements,  hke  the  Athanasian  Creed,  which  profess 
to  sum  up  Divine  Truth.  Useful  as  '  aids  to  faith,'  they 
are  intolerable  as  limitations  of  faith.  They  are  really 
water-marks  of  the  Christian  consciousness  of  the  past. 
To  make  them  'ponds'  enclosing  that  consciousness 
for  all  ages,  is  to  mistake  both  their  real  origin  and 
the  nature  of  Divine  truth.  For  this  truth,  as  Robert- 
son steadily  maintained,  is  of  the  nature  of  poetry, 
'  to  be  felt  and  not  proved.'  ^  It  is  to  be  realised  not 
as  propositions  addressed  to  the  intellect,  but  as  the 
witness  of  God's  Spirit  to  man's  spirit.  And  so  all 
Robertson's  teaching  was  suggestive  rather  than  dog- 
matic. He  sought  to  bring  men  face  to  face  with  the 
truth  not  in  sharp  doctrinal  outlines,  but  in  the  ful- 
ness of  its  spirit  and  life,  which, — allowing  in  his  view 
differences  of  opinion, — united  men  by  a  pervasive 
spirit  of  love  to  Christ  and  to  one  another.'  He  had 
none  of  that  dread  of '  different  sorts  of  opinion  '  that 
Mr.  Maurice  had, — which  he  and  Newman  alike  stig- 
matised as  '  Liberalism.'  He  did  not  shrink  from  the 
word  '  Liberal '  in  religion.  It  expressed  the  generous 
recognition  of  difference  and  expansion  of  opinion 
here  as  in  other  things.  He  knew  very  well,  that, 
whatever  words  we  may  use,  it  is  simply  a  fact — which 
no  theory  whatever  can  alter — that  men  will  differ  in 
religious  opinion,  and  that  the  higher  view,  therefore, 
is  to  admit  the  validity  of  dogmatic  differences,  and 
to  point  to  the  true  Centre,  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  in 
1  Vol.  ii.  p.  165. 


3 1 8      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

which  all  differences,  if  they  do  not  disappear,  assume 
their  true  proportion.  This  aspect  of  Robertson's 
teaching,  we  agree  with  his  biographer  in  thinking, 
will  prove  the  most  lasting  of  all.  It  has  radiated 
upon  all  schools  of  Christian  thought  a  softening 
influence.  It  has  indicated  the  true  point  of  contact 
for  diverse  lines  of  Christian  teaching.  Boldly 
and  confidently  as  he  dealt  with  many  Chris- 
tian dogmas,  the  atonement,  the  doctrine  of  sin,  the 
doctrine  of  the  sacraments,  of  absolution,  of  im- 
puted righteousness,  of  apostolical  succession,  and 
rich  as  is  the  light  of  thought  which  he  has  thrown 
around  many  of  them,  he  never  supposed  that  he  had 
exhausted  their  meaning,  or  said  the  last  word  regard- 
ing them.  Such  solutions  as  he  gave  he  knew  to  be 
partial  like  all  other  solutions.  'The  time  might 
come  when  they  would  cease  to  be  adequate.  The 
solution  that  was  fitting  for  one  age  might  be  unfitting 
for  another.'  He  kept  his  mind  open  to  still  higher 
and  more  comprehensive  explanations.  He  looked 
forward  '  to  an  advance  of  the  Christian  Church — 
not  into  new  truths,  but  into  wider  and  more  tolerant 
views  of  those  old  truths  which  in  themselves  are 
incapable  of  change.' 

Robertson's  genius  was  thus  not  only  rich,  but 
eminently  expansive.  It  was  generous  and  Catholic 
to  the  core.  He  might  speak  at  times  bitterly  against 
Evangelicalism.  If  there  was  unfairness  in  his  mind 
at  all,  it  was  in  some  of  his  criticisms  of  Evangelical 
doctrine.  But  this  was  a  natural  reaction  against 
what  he  considered  its  injurious  commonplaces,  and 
the  suffering  they  had  inflicted  upon  him.  He 
was  upon  the  whole  highly  just  in  speech  as  he  was 


F.   W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    3 1 9 

fearless  in  thought.^  He  exhibited  the  combination 
so  rare  at  all  times  of  intense  spirituality  with  a 
large  critical  and  historical  faculty.  He  had  a  true 
appreciation, — far  more  so  than  other  teachers  with 
whom  he  has  been  classed, — of  the  natural  conditions 
underlying  the  development  of  Divine  revelation  and 
of  dogmatic  thought.  He  was  no  man  of  a  school, 
with  esoteric  thoughts  and  priv^ate  modes  of  inter- 
pretation destined  to  be  swept  away  by  the  progress 
of  criticism.  He  was  Christian  in  the  widest  sense, 
with  his  mind  alive  to  all  the  influences  of  knowledge, 
nature,  or  life.  He  stood  in  the  van  of  critical  as 
well  as  spiritual  progress,  content  to  vindicate  re- 
ligion in  the  light  of  history  and  of  conscience.  He 
had  no  wish  to  disturb  old  dogmas  in  order  to  substi- 
tute dogmas  of  his  own.  He  rather  tried  to  make  the 
best  use  of  them  he  could — knowing  how  impossible 
is  exactitude  in  matters  of  religious  opinion.  His 
aim  was  not  to  displace  violently  any  central  points 
of  faith,  but  to  make  the  old  live  as  far  as  possible 
with  the  new.  He  sought  to  broaden  down  '  from  pre- 
cedent to  precedent,'  recognising  the  universal  truth 
hidden  in  the  saying,  '  I  have  many  things  to  say  unto 
you,  but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now.'  His  biographer 
testifies  that  he  never  brought  forward  in  the  pulpit 
an  opinion  which  was  only  fermenting  in  his  mind. 
'  He  waited  till  the  must  became  wine.'  He  endea- 
voured as  far  as  in  him  lay,  without  sacrificing  truth, 
not  to  shock  the  minds  of  any  who  were  resting 
peacefully  in  an  "'  early  heaven  and  in  happy  views.' 
He  was  tender  of  weak  consciences,   and  all  honest 

1  '  I  desire  for  myself,'   he  says,   '  that  I  may  be  true  and  fearless ' 
(vol.  ii.  p.  249). 


320      Movements  of  Religions  TJwught. 

opinions.  Liberal,  in  short,  in  all  the  tendency  of 
his  thought,  with  a  mind  open  to  every  fresh  impulse 
of  truth  and  progress,  he  was  yet  wise  in  his  liberalism. 
He  knew  that  the  law  of  all  progress  is  rooted  in  the 
past,  and  that  men  will  advance  in  religion  as  in 
everything  else  not  by  displacement  but  by  expan- 
sion, by  building  the  temple  of  truth  to  a  loftier 
height,  not  by  subverting  it  and  beginning  once 
more  from  the  naked  soil.  Few  minds  have  enriched 
Christian  thought  more  in  our  time,  or  given  it  a 
more  healthy  or  sounder  impulse. 

Robertson  died  in  the  summer  of  1853.  Twelve 
years  afterwards,  when  his  sermons  had  spread  far  and 
wide,^  a  kindred  spirit  wrote  of  his  Life  and  Letters, 
which  had  been  sent  to  him  by  his  daughter,  that 
no  'present  of  thought'  could  be  more  valuable. 
'  Robertson  helps  me,'  said  Bishop  Ewing,  '  to  a 
deeper  realisation  of  that  underlying  life  of  the 
soul  which  is  not  dependent  on  externals,  but  which 
gives  to  all  circumctances  their  true  colour  and  signi- 
ficance, forming  as  it  were  God  within  ourselves.' 
Alexander  Ewing  had  begun  his  ministr)^,  a  year  or 
two  before  Robertson — in  the  Scottish  Episcopal 
Church.  He  was  ordained  a  deacon  at  Inverness  in 
the  autumn  of  1838.  But  the  former  had  nearly 
completed  his  brief  career  before  the  latter  came  to 
be  known  as  a  remarkable  man.  Ordained  a  Priest 
in   1 84 1,  he  became  Bishop  of  Argyll  and  the  Isles  in 

1  Eleven  editions  of  the  first  volume  of  his  sermons  had  been  published 
before  his  Life  and  Letters  appeared.  Their  circulation  in  America  has 
also  been  very  wide ;  and  their  republication  in  the  Tauchnitz  edition 
of  English  shows  still  more  perhaps  their  wide-spread  popularity. 


F.   W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    321 

1846;  but  it  was  not  till  nearly  ten  years  later  that 
he  began  to  show  any  of  that  definite  influence  which 
he  continued  to  exercise  with  growing  effect,  not  only 
in  Scotland  and  in  his  own  communion,  but  through- 
out England,  till  his  death.  He  cannot  be  said  to 
have  been  an  original  force  in  the  Christian  thought 
of  the  century.  If  Thomas  Erskine  and  Macleod 
Campbell  had  not  lived,  Alexander  Ewing  would 
certainly  not  have  been  the  teacher  that  he  was  ;  yet 
there  was  a  sense  in  which  he  improved  their  teaching. 
With  less  power  of  thought  and  less  theological 
knowledge — bishop  as  he  was — he  had  yet  upon 
the  whole  a  healthier,  manlier,  and  more  natural 
turn  of  mind  than  either.  He  was  more  of  a  man 
among  men,  more  free  from  the  spirit  of  coterie,  with 
a  wider  range  of  purely  human  feeling,  more  rational 
and  broadly  sympathetic,  with  bursts  of  poetry  in  his 
heart.  He  made  Erskine's  acquaintance  in  Carlyle's 
company  in  1855,  and  an  intimate  friendship  soon 
sprung  up  between  them,  in  which  Macleod  Campbell 
shared.  He  expresses  in  his  letters  repeated  obliga- 
tions to  both  of  them.  The  three  friends  especially 
met  at  Pollok,  the  residence  of  Sir  John  Maxwell,  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Glasgow  ;  and  Bishop  Ewing  has 
left  us,  in  one  of  his  Present  Day  Papers,  a  pleasant 
sketch  of  the  charms  of  the  old  residence  and  its 
dignified,  thoughtful,  and  genial  host.  The  sketch 
might  stand  almost  as  a  companion  to  that  memorable 
one  of  Falkland,  and  his  theological  friends  at  Tew, 
near  Oxford,  so  well  known  in  Clarendon's  descrip- 
tion.^    Here  the  friends  discoursed  of  the  greatness  of 

»  Clarendon's   Life,   vol.    i.  pp.  42-50.      Clarendon  Press  ed.     See 
also  Rational  Theology  in  England,  vol.  i.  pp.  1 18-29. 

X 


32  2       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

the  Divine  love,  and  how  the  Divine  love  was  only 
another  name  for  the  Divine  righteousness  and 
holiness ;  how  all  the  attributes  of  God  in  one  sense 
equally  condemned  the  sinner  and  equally  sought  his 
salvation  ;  and  how  the  popular  theology  had  gone 
astray  in  arraying  one  attribute  against  another, 
instead  of  holding  them  closely  in  unity.  Both 
Erskine  and  Campbell  had  by  this  time  ripened  in 
thought.  Without  changing  their  original  stand- 
point, they  had  both  grown  in  knowledge  of  men, 
and  books,  and  theologies  other  than  their  own. 
Campbell  had  just  published  his  great  work  on  The 
Nature  of  the  Atonement,  which  has  affected  so  many 
minds  far  beyond  his  own  school,  and  deepened  and 
enriched,  it  may  be  said  without  exaggeration,  the 
thought  of  Christendom  on  this  great  subject.  We 
can  easily  understand  how  the  youngest  mind  of 
the  three  was  stimulated,  and,  as  he  says  himself, 
'  bettered  '  by  such  high  converse. 

Happily  there  were  elements  of  higher  thought  in 
Ewing  from  the  first,  and  still  more  happily  his 
intellectual  and  spiritual  nature  continued  to  grow 
with  a  healthy  spontaneity.  Notwithstanding  all  that 
he  owed  to  both  Campbell  and  Erskine,  he  did  not 
allow  himself  to  be  confined  by  leading-strings  of  any 
kind.  He  sympathised  with  the  freer  tendencies  of 
Robertson — and  of  Jowett,  of  whom  he  was  an  early 
friend, — no  less  than  with  the  special  universalism  of 
the  Row  School.  He  had  a  truer  appreciation  of  the 
limits  of  dogmatic  authority  and  of  the  natural 
historical  origin  of  dogma  than  either  of  his  Pollok 
friends.  The  free  air  of  history  and  of  life  was  more 
congenial  to  him.     Systems  of  any  kind,  new  as  well 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    323 

as  old,  were  uncongenial.  '  I  do  not  think  there  is 
any  vitality  in  the  Athanasian  formula,'  he  says  in  a 
letter  to  Archbishop  Tait.  *  It  is  holding  up  the 
skeleton  of  the  dead  amidst  the  living.  To  the  great 
majority  of  those  who  attend  our  Churches,  the  techni- 
cal phrases  of  the  Creed  are  quite  as  unintelligible 
as  are  the  special  legal  expressions  in  a  legal  deed,  or 
the  terms  in  a  physician's  prescription.  I  would  keep 
it  as  an  old  and  curious  heirloom  in  a  charter-chest.' 
The  hyper-dogmatic  language  which  has  incrusted 
the  great  facts  of  the  Atonement  and  of  revelation 
was  to  him  mere  *  materialistic  substitutions '  for 
the  facts  themselves.  '  Balances  and  equivalents,' 
he  said,  '  had  made  of  none  effect  the  direct  revela- 
tion of  the  forgiveness  of  sins.' 

With  Bishop  Ewing  as  with  Robertson  the  centre 
of  religious  truth  was  the  '  underlying  life  of  the  soul ' 
in  communion  with  God,  the  'mind  of  Christ'  within 
us.  This  was  above  all  the  teaching  of  his  significant 
series  of  discourses.  Revelation  co7isidered  as  light. 
All  external  authority — dogma,  church,  sacrament — 
is  lower  than  this, — at  the  best  only  scaffolding  to  be 
taken  down  when  the  '  true  light  that  Hghteth  every 
man'  has  shone  into  our  hearts.  'Revelation,'  he 
says,  'does  not  come  from  the  Church,  but  to  the 
Church.  She  is  a  witness,  not  a  source.  .  .  .  Chris- 
tianity is  to  be  that  which  Christ  was  on  earth.  ,  .  . 
It  is  the  communication  of  a  divine  life  through  the 
■  manifestation  of  a  divine  life.  It  is  the  raising  up  of 
a  divine  life  in  our  souls,  through  the  knowledge  of 
the  divine  life  in  the  Son  ;  the  spirit  of  the  Son  enter- 
ing into  our  spirits,  and  we  becoming  sons  also  in  our 
measure.'     If  there  is  any  difficulty  as  to  this  inner 


324      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

authority — this  Hght  within  us  reveahng  the  Hght  of 
God — there  is  at  least  no  substitute  for  it.  No 
external  authority, — no  mere  dogma, — can  be  any- 
thing to  us  till  it  has  taken  hold  of  us  and  become  a 
part  of  the  divine  light  within  us.  Or  if  we  make  it 
anything  without  its  first  having  become  this,  we  lose 
the  very  nature  of  religion  in  trying  violently  to 
seize  its  good.  There  is  and  can  be  no  religion  to 
any  man  in  accepting  any  law  but  that  which  is 
'written  on  his  heart,'  and  to  which  his  own  spirit 
witnesses  as  divine.  And  so  it  is  that  '  Standards 
of  Doctrine '  do  often  more  harm  than  good ;  and 
by  their  very  definitions  and  externalities  lead  the 
mind  away  from  God  instead  of  to  Him. 

It  was  such  growing  spirituality  and  freedom  that 
gave  Bishop  Ewing  so  much  influence.  He  constantly 
proclaimed  the  power  of  Christianity  to  stand  by 
itself.  It  was  the  '  light  of  life.'  It  was  the  highest 
thought  and  the  highest  ethic  in  the  world,  and  able 
to  vindicate  itself.  To  cry  after  '  dogmatic  authority  ' 
is  to  cry  for  the  light  of  a  candle  when  the  sun  is 
shining.  Episcopacy  and  Presbytery  have  their  re- 
spective merits.  But  they  are  only  at  the  best 
'  material  apparatus.'  '  Let  us  rise  to  higher  things,' 
he  said  in  one  of  his  Charges ;  '  let  us  live  in  that 
region  which  makes  the  face  to  shine,  and  where  the 
heart  says,  'I  have  seen  the  Lord.'  In  this  spirit  it 
lay  very  near  his  heart  to  promote  something  of  the 
nature  of  a  union  between  the  Episcopal  Church  and 
the  national  Church  of  Scotland — a  matter  in  which 
I,  with  some  others,  shared  his  confidence.  Nothing 
came,  or  indeed  could  come,  of  this  project  at  the  time  ; 
but  the  spirit  in  which   Bishop   Ewing  entered  into  it 


F.   W.  Robertso7i  a7id  Bishop  Ewiiig.    325 

was  in  the  highest  degree  Hberal  and  praiseworthy. 
His  idea  as  to  church-government  was  the  old 
rational  idea  found  at  once  in  Scripture  and  common 
sense,  and  alone  verifiable  from  history,  that  while 
one  form  of  government  may  be  better  than  another 
— more  calculated  to  insure  the  W(?//-being  of  the 
Church — the  form  itself  did  not  enter  into  the  being 
of  the  Church.  He  himself  believed  Episcopacy  to 
be  the  best  form;  but  this  not  only  did  not  pre- 
vent his  hearty  co-operation  with  his  Presbyterian 
brethren,  but  made  him  all  the  more  seek  for  oppor- 
tunities of  such  co-operation.  Among  his  last 
desires  was  to  testify  in  the  College  Chapel  at 
Glasgow  to  the  power  of  a  common  faith  uniting  his 
own  Church  and  the  Church  of  Scotland,  and  he  was 
only  prevented  doing  so  by  an  act  of  Bishop  Wilson 
of  Glasgow  refusing  him  permission  to  do  so.  He  was 
much  impressed  and  pained  by  what  took  place  on 
this  occasion.  Writing  to  a  friend,  he  expresses  him- 
self as  follows  : — '  I  cannot  say  how  much  it  has  im- 
pressed me  with  the  feeling  that  these  apparently 
innocent  things — Apostolic  Succession  and  High 
views  (as  they  are  called)  of  the  Christian  Sacra- 
ments— are  really  anticlwistian  in  their  operation. 
When  they  take  shape  in  actual  life,  they  reveal 
their  meaning  to  be  a  doctrine  of  election,  which 
is  just  so  much  worse  than  the  common  one  that  it 
is  external  and  official,  and  which,  moreover,  renders 
the  sacraments  themselves  uncertain  in  their  efficacy 
by  demanding  the  co-operation  of  the  will  of  the 
minister,  if  the  reception  of  them  is  to  be  savingly 
beneficial.  How  destructive  the  doctrine  must  be 
of    all    simple    and    immediate    fellowship    between 


326      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

man  and  man    and   between    man  and  God,  I   need 
not  say.' 

Bishop  Ewing  may  not  stand  in  the  foremost  rank 
of  Christian  thinkers ;  his  theological  education  was 
of  too  desultory  character ;  the  mass  of  his  thought 
was  too  slight.  But  his  vivid  intuitions  of  the  Divine, 
his  broad  Catholicity,  his  intensely  human  and 
truth-loving  aspirations,  gave  him  a  significant  place 
among  those  who  have  understood  the  needs  of  our 
time,  and  who  have  laboured  to  promote  a  more 
enlightened  view  of  Christianity.  Resting  in  one 
or  two  central  truths,  the  light  of  his  ow^n  life,  his 
mind  was  open  on  all  sides  to  further  light  and 
knowledge.  He  was  singularly  progressive  in  all 
the  aspects  of  his  thought,  while  holding  firmly  to 
the  Head  and  Centre  of  all  Christian  thought — 
Christ.  There  can  be  no  higher  attitude  of  mind. 
What  he  said  of  his  friend  Dr.  Macleod  Campbell 
was  eminently  true  of  himself,  that  he  sought  to 
interpret  Revelation  '  in  the  light  of  its  facts  '  rather 
than  of  past  theories.  So  in  all  theology  he  got  near 
to  God.  He  was  satisfied  that  the  Divine  substance 
of  Truth  remained  unimpaired  however  imperfect  the 
vehicle  of  it  might  be  proved  to  be.  He  and  Camp- 
bell and  Robertson  did  much  to  prepare  the  way  for 
the  free  exercise  of  historical  criticism  on  the  letter 
of  Scripture  by  showing  how  independent  of  all  such 
criticism  is  the  essence  of  Divine  truth — '  how  little 
the  treasure  itself  is  affected  by  the  nature  of  the 
vessel  containing  it'  This  disengagement  of  the 
spirit  from  the  letter — of  the  heavenly  treasure  from 
the  earthly  vessel,  is  destined  to  be  a  fertile  principle 
in  the  future  of  Theology,  and  to  pave  the  way  at 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewing.    327 

once  for  the  free  rights  of  criticism  and  the  rightful 
demands  of  faith.^ 

With  Bishop  Ewing's  name  we  might  close  our 
review.  In  even  including  him  we  have  gone  some- 
what beyond  our  limits,  inasmuch  as  his  chief  activity 
was  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  and  so  beyond  the 
period  we  have  set  to  ourselves  in  these  lectures. 
With  the  year  1 860  at  the  latest  a  series  of  new  lines 
of  religious  thought  set  in.  There  is  a  new  outbreak 
of  '  Liberalism  '  at  Oxford,  marked  by  the  publica- 
tion of  Essays  and  Rcvieivs.  The  note  of  this 
Liberalism  is  not  merely  a  freer  application  of  the 
principles   of   historical    criticism     to    Scripture    and 

1  Bishop  Ewing  was  confessedly  indebted — for  the  clearness  of  his 
views  as  to  the  distinction  between  Revelation  and  Theology,  and 
the  true  character  of  Theology — to  the  Rev.  Frederick  Myers,  whose 
Catholic  Thoughts  on  the  Bible  and  Theology  were  published  in  his 
series  of  Frese7it-day  Papers.  Frederick  Myers  was  incumbent  of 
St.  John's,  Keswick,  from  183810  1851,  and  may  be  known  to  some 
of  our  readers  as  the  author  of  a  remarkable  book,  Lectures  on  Great 
Men.  But  he  deserves  still  more  to  be  known  as  a  Christian  Thinker, 
the  significance  of  whose  position  might  well  have  occupied  us  in 
these  Lectures  if  it  had  been  of  a  wider  or  more  public  character. 
His  Catholic  Thoughts  on  the  Bible  and  Theology,  although  written 
and  privately  printed  as  far  back  as  1848,  were  only  published  after 
Bishop  Ewing's  death,  and  have  unhappily  never  attained  to  much 
popularity.  This  is  greatly  to  be  regretted,  for  there  are  few  books 
at  once  so  devout  and  enlightened — so  spiritually  penetrative  and  yet 
so  rational  in  the  treatment  of  the  basis  and  structure  of  theology. 
What  theology  is  and  alone  can  be  '  as  a  science ; '  its  necessary  imper- 
fection and  indeterminateness ;  its  consequent  liability  to  modification 
as  time  and  knowledge  advance;  the  distinction  between  the  Bible 
and  Revelation,  and  again  between  the  facts  of  Revelation  and  the 
dogmas  into  which  they  have  been  woven,  are  all  set  forth  with 
admirable  perspicuity  and  grasp  of  thought.  It  is  strange  that  a 
thinker  so  really  wise  and  powerful  should  have  attracted  so  little 
attention. 


328      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

dogma,  but  specially  the  bearing  of  scientific  dis- 
covery and  method  upon  the  study  of  Theology.  And 
this  'scientific'  note  is  more  or  less  a  characteristic 
of  subsequent  speculation  down  to  the  present  time. 
The  great  ideal  of  Evolution,  underlying  all  processes 
of  thought  as  well  as  of  Nature,  came  into  promi- 
nence. '  The  side  of  the  angels '  became  a  party 
badge,  and  the  conflict  of  opinion  passed  in  the  main 
away  from  such  topics  as  had  hitherto  arrayed,  on 
different  sides,  Evangehcal,  High  Church,'  and  Broad 
Church,  to  far  more  fundamental  questions, — the  lines 
of  which  are  not  too  strongly  marked  as  Theistic 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Atheistic  on  the  other.  It 
was  not  the  intention  of  Essays  and  Reviews  to  stir 
such  fundamental  questions  ;  nor  can  it  be  said  that 
they  were  in  themselves  fairly  calculated  to  do  so.^ 
All  will  now  admit  that  much  of  the  panic  which 
the  volume  created  was  false  and  unnatural — a  panic 
of  fashion  as  much  as  of  sincere  religion.  Like 
all  such  panics  it  was  little  creditable  either  to 
the  good  sense,  or  the  critical  and  historical  know- 
ledge of  English  Christendom.  But  the  effect  was 
nevertheless  what  we  have  stated.  The  volume  was 
treated  by  the  Westminster  Review  as  a  reductio  ad 
absiirdum  of  the  Broad  Church  position.  The  in- 
sinuations of  Negativism  awoke  the  alarm  and  pro- 

1  The  junction  of  High  Church  and  Low  Church  in  an  unworthy 
assault  against  Free  thought  within  the  Church,  which  followed  Essays 
and  Reviews,  of  itself  marks  the  difference  of  the  times. 

2  I  have  the  best  reason  for  knowing  that  the  editor  of  Essays  and 
Reviews  had  no  revolutionary  intention  in  regard  to  English  theology. 
It  was  the  disturbance  of  the  religious  world,  largely  consequent  upon 
Frederic  Harrison's  article  in  the  Westminster  Review,  that  alone  gav« 
such  sinister  significance  to  the  volume. 


/^  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewi7ig,    329 

voKcd  the  violence  of  orthodoxy,  and  so  questions  of 
criticism  and  history  were  transformed  into  questions 
affecting  the  very  existence  not  only  of  Christianity 
but  of  religion, — such  questions  as  the  possibility  of 
miracle,  and  whether  any  Divine  theory  of  the  world 
is  tenable.  It  is  in  this  deeper  groove  that  religious 
thought  has  mainly  run  during  the  last  twenty-five 
years,  with  thinkers  like  Herbert  Spencer,  and  Pro- 
fessors Tyndall  and  Huxley,  and  Matthew  Arnold  on 
one  side,  and  on  the  other  a  group  of  Theistic  thinkers, 
of  whom  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  and  distin- 
guished is  certainly  Dr.  James  Martineau,  who  has 
recently  added  a  new  and  valuable  contribution  to 
the  cause  of  Spiritual  Philosophy.^  This  deeper 
conflict  was  no  doubt  opened  by  the  Mills  and  their 
school  within  the  earlier  period  we  have  reviewed,  but 
it  has  recently  passed  into  wider  and  larger  phases. 
Materialism  fights  with  bolder  and  more  far-reaching 
weapons  than  it  has  ever  before  done,  and  the  fight 
is  one  for  life  or  death  to  Religion  in  the  old  sense  of 
the  word.  It  overshadows,  therefore,  every  other  con- 
troversy in  minds  who  understand  it,  or  who  have  any 
perception  of  the  powerful  forces  at  work. 

But  other  forces  have  also  been  in  active  operation, 
and  will  remain  to  be  described  by  any  future  his- 
torian of  religious  thought.  Religion,  so  far  from 
losing  its  hold  of  the  higher  consciousness  of  our 
time,  has  not  only  survived,  but  it  may  be  said  has 
gathered  strength  under  all  the  assaults — scientific 
and  literary — which  have  menaced  it.  Our  Churches 
were  never  stronger  in  intelligence,  in  life,  in  the  per- 
ception of  difficulties  to  be  encountered  in  the  world 
1  Types  of  Ethical  Theoiy,  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford,  18S5. 


330       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

of  thought  and  of  action — of  philosophy  and  phil- 
anthropy alike ;  in  the  restoration  of  faith  and 
the  restoration  of  Society.  Not  only  so ;  but  there 
has  grown  up  in  the  wake  of  the  Broad  Church 
movement  a  school  of  historical  Criticism  repre- 
sented by  such  men  as  Bishop  Lightfoot,  with 
kindred  scholars  in  England  and  Scotland,  who  have 
brought  to  the  study  of  Scripture,  and  the  problems 
of  Revelation,  resources  of  learning  and  of  insight 
destined  to  large  results.  Different  from  the  older 
school  of  Maurice  and  Kingsley,  these  Christian 
scholars — in  the  spirit  of  Bishop  Ewing,  but  with 
ampler  knowledge — are  seeking  for  the  meaning  of 
Scripture  not  in  any  new  theories,  but  in  a  closer 
study  of  its  own  facts.  They  are  making  the  Books 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  Testament  alike 
alive  in  the  light  of  the  circumstances  of  their  origin, 
and  of  the  contemporary  ideas  of  their  respective 
times.  They  are,  in  other  words,  resuscitating  the 
Divine  Thought  which  has  been  the  life  of  the  world 
in  its  original  framework, — and  in  its  growth  and 
progressiveness  from  lower  to  higher  stages  of  de- 
velopment,— and  so  not  only  making  this  Thought 
itself  more  living  and  intelligible,  but  laying  the 
foundation  of  some  new  and  more  living  co-ordina- 
tion of  it  in  the  future.  This  is  a  true  spring  of 
advance,  which  will  not  wear  out  as  the  older  form  of 
Broad  Churchism  has  already  almost  done.  That 
Christian  criticism,  applying  the  same  methods  of 
study  to  the  Bible  which  have  been  applied  to  all 
other  ancient  literature,  has  a  great  and  fruitful  work 
before  it,  cannot  be  doubted  by  any  who  hold  at  once 
to  criticism  and  to  Christianity. 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Eiving.    331 

Among  those  who  led  the  way  in  this  Hne  of 
historical  Criticism  was  undoubtedly  Dean  Stanley. 
Some  have,  consequently,  expressed  astonishment  that 
we  have  not  given  to  him  a  prominent  place  in  our 
review.  The  astonishment  was  so  far  natural,  as  one 
at  least  of  Dean  Stanley's  most  significant  books 
appeared  within  the  fifth  decade  of  this  century,  at 
the  time  when  the  Broad  Church  movement  in  its 
original  form  was  acquiring  prominence,  viz.,  his 
Sermons  and  Essays  on  the  Apostolic  Age}  There  is 
none  of  his  many  interesting  writings  which  more  dis- 
tinctly indicates  the  line  of  thought  which  he  followed 
throughout.  It  is  instinct  with  a  rare  insight  into 
the  phenomena  of  the  Apostolic  time,  and  the  bear- 
ing of  these  phenomena  upon  the  true  interpretation 
of  Christian  thought  for  all  time.  Like  all  his 
historic  studies,  it  presents  at  once  a  picture  of  the 
past,  and  a  mirror  of  the  future.  This  volume  and 
his  biography  of  his  great  master,  Arnold  (1844),  were 
undoubtedly  among  the  most  quickening  features  of 
the  new  movement  of  thought,  which  carried  forward 
the  Christian  intelligence  after  the  collapse  of  the 
'  Oxford '  Tractarianism.  But  the  new  school  of 
historical  Criticism  to  which  Stanley  belongs  has 
only  made  itself  conspicuous  since  i860,  while  by 
this  date  the  earlier  Broad  Church  movement  had 
put  forth  all  the  freshness  of  its  thought.  Stanley's 
main  ^vork — his  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jezvish 
Church — was  only  commenced  to  be  published  in 
1862. 

The  new  historical  epoch  in  theology  may  be  said 
to  begin  in  1855,  with  the  publication  of  Stanley's 
1  Published  in  1847. 


332       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

second  important  work  of  historical  criticism — The 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians — and  Mr.  Jowett's 
no  less  important  volumes  on  the  Pauline  Epistles  to 
the  Thessalonians,  Galatians,  and  Romans,  in  the  same 
year.  These  volumes  were  hailed  at  the  time  as  mark- 
ing a  new  era  in  British  Theological  Literature,  and 
they  deserve  to  be  reckoned  in  this  light.  They 
reproduced  in  a  higher  form  all  that  was  good  in 
the  Whately  school,  with  a  richer  insight  into  the 
essential  characteristics  of  New  Testament  thought, 
and  a  far  clearer  and  more  illuminating  hold  of 
the  spiritual  and  historical  position  of  the  great 
Apostle, — of  the  true  meaning  of  his  teaching,  and  the 
development  of  his  doctrine.  From  this  time  has 
greatly  advanced  that  profounder  study  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  looks  beyond  its  traditional  to  its 
real  aspects,  and  its  organic  relations  to  contemporary 
usage  and  opinion — which  sees  in  it  a  living  litera- 
ture, and  not  a  mere  repertory  of  doctrinal  texts — 
and  aims  to  separate  the  essential  from  the  accidental 
of  Divine  Thought,  untrammelled  by  later  notions 
and  controversial  fictions.  The  text  of  Scripture  has 
been  studied  in  its  own  meaning,  and  not  in  support 
of  dogmas  which  were  the  growth  of  long  after  cen- 
turies, and  would  have  been  wholly  unintelligible  to 
the  writers  credited  with  them.  The  spirit  has  been 
liberated  from  the  letter,  and  the  very  form  and  pres- 
sure of  divine  truth  as  originally  presented  to  the 
world,  brought  near  to  us.  This  has  been  espe- 
cially true  of  the  New  Testament  age  and  its 
marvellous  phenomena.  Other  writers,  whom  we 
need  not  mention,  have  brought  resources  of  exe- 
gesis   to   their   task,  superior  to  those   of    Stanley; 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  Bishop  Ewijig.    ■x,^'x 

but  no  candid  student  can  ever  forget  how  much 
we  owe  to  his  vivid  picture  of  Bibhcal  history 
and  of  Christian  Institutions  in  their  rise  and  growth ; 
and  much  as  he  afterwards  did,  he  never  did  anything 
better  of  its  kind,  than  the  picture  which  he  gave  in 
his  volumes  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  of  the 
Apostolical  time,  with  its  conflicts  of  opinion  and  dis- 
orders of  practice — particularly  his  sketch  of  the 
primitive  eucharist,  as  '  we  see  the  banquet  spread  in 
the  late  evening '  with  its  strange  blending  of  the 
earthly  and  the  heavenly.  Nowhere  is  the  first  fresh- 
ness of  the  Gospel  seen  in  more  living  struggle  with 
Greek  intellectuality  and  Jewish  obstinacy,  taking 
colour  and  modification  from  both,  yet  under  all 
hindrances  changing  the  face  of  the  world.  Again 
the  presentation  of  Pauline  thought  in  its  depth, 
range,  and  power,  yet  with  the  garments  of  Rabbinical 
scholasticism  here  and  there  encumbering  it,  was 
made  hardly  less  vivid  to  us  in  Mr.  Jowett's  volumes. 
There  were  those  who  detected  in  these  volumes 
traces  of  an  underlying  philosophy  which  tended  to 
deflect  here  and  there  the  straight  spiritual  meaning 
of  the  apostle — and  also  a  tendency  to  minimise  that 
meaning  in  its  full  scope :  but  no  real  student  of  the 
volumes  can  doubt  that  upon  the  whole  Mr.  Jowett 
tried  faithfully  to  apply  his  own  canon,  that  the 
true  use  of  philosophy  in  reference  to  religion  is  '  to 
restore  its  simplicity,  by  freeing  it  from  those  per- 
plexities which  the  love  of  system,  or  past  philo- 
sophies, or  the  imperfections  of  language,  or  the  mere 
lapse  of  ages,  may  have  introduced  into  it.' 

Both  writers  mark    for  us  a  turning-point  in  the 
criticism  of  Scripture  and  the  renascence  of  Christian 


334       Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

ideas  nearly  contemporary  with  the  influx  of  new 
ideas  in  philosophy  and  science,  which  have  also 
acted  so  powerfully  in  recent  years.  They  fitly  close, 
therefore,  the  older  period  and  open  the  new.  We 
have  adverted  to  them  only  in  this  point  of  view, 
and  with  no  intention  of  estimating  their  full  im- 
portance. They  will  claim  such  an  estimate  from 
any  one  who  may  afterwards  venture  to  review  the 
more  recent  forces  of  thought  which  are  still  operat- 
ing around  us. 

Meanwhile  these  lectures,  desultory  and  imperfect 
as  they  have  been,  may  help  to  awaken  some  intel- 
ligent comprehension  of  the  movements  of  religious 
thought  during  the  earlier  portion  of  our  century. 
They  show  how  natural  is  the  growth  of  this 
thought  in  its  varying  phases,  springing  up  under 
manifold  influences  in  the  national  consciousness ; 
and  how  it  is  marked  upon  the  whole  by  a  character 
of  advance.  It  is  only  stagnant  in  times  of  stagnation 
and  low  religious  vitality.  There  are  eternal  truths, 
no  doubt,  in  religion  as  in  ethics ;  but  it  is  in  the  very 
nature  of  these  truths,  and  the  deeper  inquiry  which 
they  continually  excite,  to  take  ever  new  expression. 
We  have  been  slow  in  Scotland  to  recognise  this 
inevitable  law  of  development  in  religious  thought, 
supposing  ourselves  a  centre  to  which  others  moved 
rather  than  a  part  of  the  common  movement.  There 
was  good  in  the  old  Puritan  idea  of  religious  immo- 
bility. It  has  kept  us  strong  and  righteous-minded  in 
many  things,  but  it  has  not  been  without  evil  conse- 
quences. It  has  made  us  the  hardest  religious  con- 
troversialists   in    the    Christian   world — severe    upon 


F.  W.  Robertson  and  BisJiop  Ewing.    335 

one  another — repellent  where  we  ought  to  have  been 
sympathetic,  and  uncharitable  where  we  ought  to 
have  held  each  other  by  the  hand. 

It  is  needless,  however,  to  mourn  the  past.  Let  us 
try  to  build — if  not  for  ourselves,  for  our  children's 
children — some  fairer  temple  of  Christian  thought 
and  worship,  in  which  they  may  dwell  together  in 
unity.  But  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves.  Unity  can 
never  come  from  dogma,  as  our  forefathers  unhappily 
imagined.  Dogma  splits  rather  than  unites  from  its 
very  nature.^  It  is  the  creature  of  intellect,  and  the 
intellect  can  never  rest  It  remains  unsatisfied  with 
its  own  work,  and  is  always  turning  up  afresh  the 
soil  of  past  opinion.  The  spirit  of  Christ  can  alone 
bind  together  the  fragments  of  Truth,  as  they  mirror 
themselves  in  our  partial  reason. 

If  these  lectures  have  brought  home  to  any  the 
conviction  of  how  much  larger  the  truth  of  God  is 
than  their  own  changing  notions  of  it,  and  how  the 
movements  of  Christian  thought  are  for  this  very 
end — that  we  may  prove  all  things,  and  hold  fast 
that  which  is  good — they  will  not  be  without  fruit. 
We  need  not  be  afraid  that  any  intelligent  study 
of  opinions  differing  from  our  own  will  make  us 
indifferent  to  the  truth.  The  truth  itself  can  only  be 
seen  by  a  large  vision.  What  we  perhaps  all  need 
most  to  learn  is  not  satisfaction  with  our  opinions — 
that  is  easily  acquired  by  most — but  the  capacit}^  of 
looking  beyond  our  own  horizon ;  of  searching  for 
deeper   foundations    of    our   ordinary  beliefs,  and   a 

'  'Opinions  are  but  a  poor  cement  of  human  souls.' — George  Eliot, 
— Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  ii8. 


336      Movements  of  Religious  Thought. 

more  sympathetic  appreciation  of  the  beliefs  of 
others.  While  cherishing,  therefore,  what  we  our- 
selves feel  to  be  true,  let  us  keep  our  minds  open 
to  all  truth,  and  especially  to  the  teaching  of  Him 
who  is  '  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life.' 


INDEX. 


Arnold,  Matthew,  207,  256,  329. 
Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  32,  44, 53-65.  {See 
Contents,  Lecture  11.) 

Bentham,  170,  218. 

Bray,  Charles,  257. 

'  Broad'  Church— origin  of  the  tens,  26^. 

Buller,  Charles,  222. 

Bunsen,  Chevalier,  45. 

Campbell,  John  Madeod,  145-156, 159, 

321. 
Candlish,  Dr.,  280,  290. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  6,  8,  133,  157,  169-208 

{see  Contents,  Lecture  v.),  209,  210. 
Chalmers,  Dr.,  134,  143,  161,  173. 
Church,  Richard  William  (now  Dean  of 

St.  Paul's),  120. 
Clough,  A  H.,  256. 
Coleridge,  6-34  (j«  Contents,  Lecturei.), 

157,  170,  262. 
Combe,  George,  127. 
Comte,  240, 
Conybeare,  J.  J.,  76. 
Copleston,  Bishop  of  Liandaff,  42. 

Eliot,  George,  253,  236-260,  304. 
Erskine,  Thomas,  127, 129-144,  187,  266, 

321. 
Essays  and  RevU-ws,  327. 
Ewing,  Bishop,  320-327. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  188,  196,  255. 
Froude,  R.  H.,  95-99,  105. 

Gladstoke,  W.  E.,  45,  69,  73,  X20,  123, 

284. 
Gorham,  Rev.  Mr.,  315. 


Green,  Joseph  Henry,  on  Coleridge,  11. 
Grote,  George,  246-250. 

Hall,  Robert,  169. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  37. 

Hampden,  Bishop,  44,  65-74, 

Hare,  A  W.,  38. 

Hare,  J.  C,  8,  34-38. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  328. 

Hawkins,  Dr.,  42. 

Hayward,  Abraham,  222. 

Hennell,   Charles   and    Sara,   256-258. 

Ievtng,  Edward,  150,  156-160,  178. 

JowETT,  Rev.  Benjamin  (Professor), 333. 

Keble,  John,  42,  86,  99-102, 105,  112. 
Kicgsley,  Charles,  229,  278,  2S6-294. 

Lamb,  Charles,  8. 
Leslie,  Sir  John,  127,  133. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  250-253. 
Lightfoot,  Bishop,  330. 

Malak,  Cesar,  300. 

Martineau,  James,  250,  329. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  129,  142,  222,  225,  260, 
294.    {See  Contents,  Lecture  vn.) 

Meams,  Dr.,  135. 

Melbourne,  Viscount,  75. 

Mill,  James,  2ri9-2i6. 

Mai,  John  Stuart,  171,  193,  209-253. 
{See  Contents,  Lecture  vi.) 

Mihnan,  H.  H.,  79-85. 
I  Mozley,  J.  B.,  63,  120. 
I   Mozley,  T.  {Reminiscences),  66,  70. 

Myers,  Rev.  Frederick,  3:7. 

Y 


33^ 


Index. 


Newman,  J.  H  ,  54,  6g,  "&(>, passim  {see 

Contents,  Lecture  iii.),  272,  312. 
Newman,  Francis  W.,  122,256. 
"  Noetics,"  the,  43,  iii. 

Oakeley,  Rev.  F.,  120. 
Oxford  Movement.  {See  Contents,  Lec- 
ture III.) 

Palmer,  William,  106. 

Pusey,  Dr.,  89,  91,  109,  112,  271,  285. 

Robertson,  F.  W.,  279,  295-320.     {See 

Contents,  Lecture  viii.) 
Rose,  H.  J.,  76,  9  i. 
Row  Heresy,  the.     (5f^  Campbell.) 

Schleiermacher,  36,  75. 

Scott,   A.  J.    (afterwards   Principal  of 

Owens  College),  150,  154. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  87,  125,  194. 
Shairp,  Principal,  151. 


Shee,  Sergeant,  222. 
Smith,  Dr.  Pye,  169. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  228,  255. 
Stanley,  Dean,  79,  331. 
Sterling,  John,  3S-40,  222,  225. 
Story,  Robert  (of  Roseneath),  150. 
Strachey,  Edward,  273. 

Taylor,  W.  (of  Norwich),  194. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  263. 
Thirlwall,  Bishop,  75-79,  221. 
Thomson,  Dr.  Andrew,  131,  143,  161. 
T7-acts  for  the  Titties,  lod,  passim. 
Traill,  H.  D.,  on  Coleridge,  7,  31. 

Ward,  Rev.  W.  G.,  120. 

Whately,  Archbishop, ^i, passim ;  46-53. 

White,  Blanco,  45,  70. 

Wilberforce  (Bishop),  6g,  70,  73,  79. 

Wilson,  Bishop  (of  Glasgow),  325. 

Wordsworth,  5,  225,  238. 

Wright,  Thos.  (of  Borthwick),  162-166 


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DEC  15  1965    pM 


REC'D  ID-URir 
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AA    000  780  277 


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